Engineering Carbon Material Sustainability: My Contribution as a Chemical Engineering Researcher

Jeff LeBlanc, Chemical engineering PhD candidate, Carbon sustainability

A general description of what I do as a chemical engineer is converting one raw material into another material which could serve as a final product itself or as a precursor material for another process.  Typically, we do this by decomposing the material to some elementary form so that it may then be tailored to a certain function.  Carbon, for example, is something that we can do a lot of things with.

As a researcher, I am trying to work towards producing carbon material sustainably so that it may be used as a template for building other products.  By utilizing properties of the different physical forms of carbon, we can make an enormously wide range of tools from electronics to the strongest materials on the planet.  In addition, carbon can be functionalized to solve air and water pollution problems or even be mixed into soil to enhance crop yields.

We have the ability to create a lot of value from making carbon materials from things that have no value to society and are considered waste, like used plastic bags or nut shells.  One of my hopes is for people to realize this potential and strive to do something smart with the waste produced by civilization.  We have much better options than what we are currently doing with it.