Enrico Manfredi-Haylock

I am a posdoctoral research associate in Professor Magda Titirici's group researching depolymerisation and separation technologies for PET recycling. As part of this research I have developed a process to quickly break down unrecyclable PET waste to its constituent components quickly, but under mild reaction conditions to reduce the energy consumption of the process. I have given talks about this research at Tohoku and Osaka universities in Japan. I am also working with other colleagues in the group to seperate the constituents using electrodyalisis which obviates the need for water based distillation further reducing energy consumption of the process. In this group I also built an automated membrane electrode assembly flow cell that can run different samples through the anode and cathode to test novel electrocatalyst materials and reaction conditions. The prototype machine I built is currently being expanded into a larger version which will form a core part of the high throughput electrocatalyst testing setup currently being built in the DIGIBAT laboratory in Chemical Engineering. I did my PhD with Professor David Payne in using Deep Eutectic Solvents for Lead Acid Battery recycling. As part of this research I screened a large number of solvents with natural components, and then further optimised them to obtain solvents that could dissolve 400 g/L of unprocessed battery waste, 100 g/L of PbSO4 and 900 g/L of PbO2 at room temperature. PbSO4 and PbO2 are the 2 main constituents of battery waste which are challenging to dissolve in other less sustainable solvents, even at elevated temperatures. During this time I was responsible for comissioning and managing equipment in the Payne group wet chemistry and XPS laboratories. During my PhD I was also selected for the ConceptionX startup program (Cohort VI) and the Climate-KIC Climate Launchpad (placed 2nd in the UK) and have recieved extensive research commericialisation training through these. I was also a consultant for one and a half years before and during my university degree, and this has given me insight into how technology is deployed by industry, and what industrial users look for when considering innovations to acquire.

• Faculty of Engineering