The presence of pollutants in industrial effluents and soil is leading to environmental concerns due their impact on ecosystems and human health. These compounds can retard photosynthesis process, limit the growth of aquatic biota, lead to the destruction of biodiversity. To overcome these issues, common adsorption technologies are being applied. Many of them are still very cost-prohibitive. Therefore, there is a rising interest in finding relatively effective, low-cost, and simply accessible adsorbents. Thus, the use of several low cost adsorbents is being taken into account such as waste food residues, natural fibers waste, sewage sludge or natural clay. To address the need of more sustainable and eco-friendly processes and technologies, the proposed project addresses the development of more sustainable hybrid (organic-inorganic) bio-based adsorbents with improved pollutants adsorption features by applying the principles of the circular economy and sustainability with a wide attention on life cycle assessment analysis. By stating that, the PhD student will be responsible for designing, fabricating, characterizing and testing novel organic-inorganic composite materials as potential adsorbents of pollutants in wastewaters and soil. The proposed strategy aims to reduce the dependence on typical adsorbents, for example activated carbon, which are often characterized by their expensiveness.

All the candidates must possess a Master Degree in Chemical Engineering. It is required a full knowledge of synthesis and physical chemical characterization of novel hybrid hierarchically structured materials. More in details, the applicant should show a multidisciplinary approach and previous experiences in fabrication of hybrid composite adsorbents from waste resources through ionotropic gelation techniques as well as synthesis of binary and ternary layered double hydroxides with their characterization are advisable.

The PhD student will work at the Department of Industrial Engineering of University of Salerno. The research team is composed by two Associate Professors, three senior researchers and several PhD/Post Docs responsible of different National and International collaborative projects. The laboratory is equipped of an advanced synthesis apparatus for green chemistry applications. Moreover, novel nanometric materials could be fabricated by using coaxial and multi-needle based electrospinning apparatus. The average publication number of team is roughly 15-18 articles/year on high-impact international journals.