(213f) My Career: Discs, Rods, Flexible and Deformable Particles, and Some Side Trips Along the Way

This presentation will be a ‘tour’ of my career, from my early PhD research investigating the hindered diffusion of petroleum asphaltenes to recent work involving diffusion of tailed viruses and filtration of single stranded DNA and ‘squishy’ bacteria. The common thread through much of this work has been a focus on the impact that particle and molecular shape can have on hindered diffusive and convective transport through porous membranes.

Theoretical efforts to understand hindered diffusion and convection date back several decades (Anderson and Quinn (1974), Brenner and Gaydos (1977), Anderson (1981), Ennis (1996) and Deen (1987)) and were primarily focused on spherical particles in cylindrical pores, often with only short range (steric) interactions governing particle transport. In my presentation, I will discuss some of the research my students and I have pursued with less ‘ideal’ systems. These efforts have involved both experimental as well as theoretical investigations.

In addition to discussing some of our work focused on particle and macromolecular transport in microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes, I will also present results from my work involving gas separations with room temperature ionic liquids and supported ionic liquid membranes.