Title: Microfluidic tools for fast exploration of liquid/liquid extraction thermodynamics

Biography:

NTU Vg. Prof. JC Gabriel is Research Director at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) as well as co-director of the NTU Singapore CEA Alliance for Research in Circular Economy (SCARCE). He joined CEA in 2007 where he was CEA/LETI institute’s “Beyond CMOS” program manager. He then became deputy director of CEA’s Nanoscience program and co-principal investigator of the REE-CYCLE advanced ERC project (2013-2018), aiming to developing new rare earth extraction/recycling processes. Former student at the “École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France”, he received his Ph. D. from Orsay’s University, and his Habilitation from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. His career is a mixed academic – industrial one (CNRS/Nanomix Inc./CEA) in nanoscience. As such, he published 60+ papers in international peer reviewed journals and is co-inventor 50+ patents or patent applications (nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes, graphene and chemical sensors integration).

Abstract

We will report on a newly developed liquid-liquid extraction microfluidic device integrated with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF)[1]. Our tools are aimed at studying liquid/liquid extraction processes. We will first present our studies of solvent chemical activities using FTIR spectroscopy . Using this system, we will also present unpublished results of extraction and back-extraction of rare-earth elements using synergic extractants. We perform, for the first time, on-line XRF quantification in microfluidics to monitor the extraction. This approach allowed us to quickly study the variation of free energies of transfer for the extraction and back extraction of three rare-earth elements at different temperatures. Overall, thanks to an automated approach, we show that thermodynamics and kinetics of extraction can be obtained in less than 12 hours with a resulting liquid waste of less than 20mL.