Seminar: Interdisciplinary Concepts in Energy Materials: From Nuclear Waste to Improved Batteries and Fuel Cells

June 30^th 2022, Sala Convegni at 11am

The focus of this presentation will be the interdisciplinary nature of concepts encountered in a broad range of application areas ranging from solid oxide fuel cell materials development where “enhancement” of ionic or electronic transport is desired to contemporary work in nuclear waste immobilization with a focus on “blocking“ transport of mobile species. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are promising sustainable energy systems with high efficiency, fuel flexibility, and limited byproducts. Proton-conducting SOFCs (H-SOFCs) has attracted increased interest in recent years due to the lower working temperatures (400-700 ̊C). In this work, a new type of proton ceramic conductor was developed through by enhancing the conduction at the interface. In contrast, crystalline ceramic candidates have been proposed as alternatives to vitreous nuclear waste forms for their ability to trap and “block” elemental release. In the late 1970s, SYNROC, short for synthetic rock, was developed to immobilize high-level nuclear waste (HLW). The hollandite mineral group is one of the most studied as a template for SYNROC materials and includes the titanate mineral forms of hollandite. Data point to a correlation between the thermodynamic stability and elemental release for the crystalline hollandite ceramic waste forms across a broad compositional range, which may be used in future materials design for nuclear waste immobilization.

Bio: Kyle Brinkman is the chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson University in Clemson, SC. Brinkman received a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and a Master of Science in materials science and engineering both from Clemson. He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland with a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. Brinkman then served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute in Japan as part of a program sponsored by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and later worked as a principal engineer in the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed technical publications and government reports, four patents and currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Materials Science and Co-director of Clemson’s Nuclear NEESRWM “Nuclear Environmental Engineering Sciences and Radioactive Waste Management Center and as a DOE-NETL Faculty Fellow. He was the recipient of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society TMS Brimacombe Medalist Award (2020), was awarded the National Institute of Ceramic Engineers, ACerS/NICE Karl Schwartzwalder-Professional Achievement in Ceramic Engineering (PACE) Award in 2015 and was elected an ACERS Fellow in 2020.