Substantial material resource recovery opportunities exist in the urban environment to support more sustainable urban development. However, the ability to produce safe and quality recoverable requires in-depth environmental materials studies and state-of-the-art fabrication and characterization technologies. For example, the quantitative X-ray diffraction (QXRD) technique has accurately monitored the transfer and behavior of targeted hazardous metals when being beneficially used for ceramic products in the construction industry. The work of recovering metallic lead from waste cathode ray tube (CRT) glass serves as an excellent example to reflect how environmental materials techniques assisted the development of transforming urban electronic waste into new metal resources. Lastly, the demonstration of recovering phosphorus from wastewater streams as quality slow-releasing fertilizer for agriculture applications leads to new solutions to tackle critical resource challenges with the fast-developing urban mining concept around the world.
Professor Kaimin Shih received his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He established “Environmental Materials Research Group” in the Faculty of Engineering at HKU in 2008 to engineer and employ material properties for innovative environmental and energy applications, such as various waste-to-resource strategies, environmentally-friendly materials/products, urban pollution prevention, water and waste treatment technologies, and energy-storage materials. Professor Shih is listed among the HKU Scholars in the Top 1% for his research achievement, and he also received the university’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014 for his contribution to environmental sustainability education.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.
