A College of Glasgow chemist is establishing a brand new analysis group with £1.4m in new funding from the Engineering and Bodily Sciences Analysis Council (EPSRC), a part of UK Analysis and Innovation.
Dr Nicola Bell has acquired an Open Fellowship award from the ESPRC to assist groundbreaking new analysis into strategies of safely dealing with hazardous supplies in airless, moisture-free environments.
The analysis undertaking, referred to as DIGINERT, will construct on work she started as a Analysis Fellow within the College of Chemistry and her background in actinide chemistry.
Over the course of the five-year fellowship, Dr Bell and her collaborators will work to develop new automated distant dealing with instruments able to manipulating extremely reactive chemical species beneath inert situations.
The outcomes of their analysis could possibly be used to develop improved strategies to deal with probably hazardous waste produced at nuclear energy crops. The nuclear business works with a spread of supplies that are extremely reactive in air and there’s a must course of these supplies to make sure their secure administration, storage and disposal. Automation of this processing can due to this fact enhance nuclear security and scale back prices.
Over the course of the five-year fellowship, Dr Bell and her staff will collaborate with companions at Sellafield Ltd to construct a brand new system which is able to allow safer dealing with of extremely reactive chemical substances in inert atmospheres, the place they won’t be uncovered to the weather.
She will even work intently with Dr Bjoern Seitz and Dr Rick Grey of the College of Glasgow’s College of Physics and Astronomy, and produce two newly-appointed postdoctoral researchers to affix her within the undertaking.
The DIGINERT staff will develop an automatic inert ambiance chemistry system, constructing new reactors and glassware able to excluding air and water, sustaining atmospheric security for lengthy durations of time, and storing and transporting extremely reactive chemical substances.
As a way to make sure that the system can work autonomously and securely, they will even develop new sensors and software program designed to supply advance warning of potential points and mitigate the dangers of dealing with hazardous chemical substances in automation.
The know-how will likely be validated by way of work within the laboratory utilizing uranium compounds just like these present in nuclear waste supplies, and on-site on the Sellafield plant in Cumbria.
Dr Bell stated: “I’m very grateful to the EPSRC for funding my Open Fellowship, and for the assist and encouragement I’ve acquired from my colleagues within the College of Chemistry since I joined the College of Glasgow.
“The autonomy offered by the Open Fellowship will enable me to mix the varied strands of my prior experience to push the boundaries of the rising area of digital chemistry and allow me to deal with new functions for inert-atmosphere nuclear science and reactive chemistry extra extensively.
“In the end, I hope that the system we develop will open new avenues for analysis in anaerobic and bespoke ambiance laboratory chemistry, and new alternatives for information alternate between academia and business.”
