The Jun group is exploring the environmental impacts of human activities through improved understanding of the fate and transport of contaminants and nanoparticles. In particular, we aim to improve our understanding of the climate change impacts on water supply. We also are studying biogeological cycling in complex environmental systems from nanoscale to macroscale, with a view to conserving and restoring sound water environments.
In addition, our group is performing a comprehensive analysis of the potential risks associated with CO2 sequestration strategies to mitigate climate change and developing new treatment techniques and new catalysts for purifying drinking water and remediating contaminated water and soil.
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A Recent Picture of the Environmental NanoChemistry Lab members (A day that we need to celebrate many things! May 17, 2013)
March 1, 2013: Congratulations! The Chancellor Wrighton and Washington University's Board of Trustees approved Prof. Jun's promotion to associate professor with tenure.
(Present from the ENCL members)
May 17, 2013: Congratulations! Yi and Yandi walked on the commencement day. Yandi defened her Ph.D. thesis this month and Yi will defende his thesis in June. Congratulations and best wishes!
May 16, 2013: Congratulations and Welcome! Doyoon Kim, Haesung Jung, and Lijie Zhang finished their qualifying exams and "formally" joined the ENCL group!
May 1, 2013: Congratulations! Yandi Hu successfully defended her dissertation. Now, she earned the Ph.D.! Dr. Hu is the first ENCL Ph.D..
May 1, 2013: Welcome! Dr. Xuyang Liu joined our research group as postdoc scholar. Prior to join our group, he worked at the USEPA as National Research Council Research Fellow (2009-2013). Dr. Liu's expertise is related to the fate and transport of nanoparticles, such as TiO2, CeO2, silicon, boron, aluminum nanoparticles as well as carbon nanotubes.
April 27, 2013: Prof. Jun became the McDonnell Academy's Ambassador to Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea. "The McDonnell Academy Ambassadors are appointed by Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton to advise the Scholars and charged to strengthen collaboration with the partner universities. Collaborative efforts engage faculty and students of the University and those of the partner universities in various activities that enhance Scholarly interests and international understanding."
April 12-22, 2013: Our group travelled to the Argonne National Laboratory for synchrotron based x-ray beamtime: grazing incidence x-ray scattering (April 12-15 and 17-22) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (April 14-18).
April 19, 2013: Congratulations to Jessica! As a part of the Ryckman Lecture and Earth Day Event, Jessica received a 2013 graduate research award of the Department of Eneregy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering. Ryckman Lecture speaker, Dr. Alvarez-Cohen, and Dr. Biswas presented the award to Jessica. Jessica, we all are proud of you! |
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April 8-9, 2013: Our group members presented at the ACS meeting in New Orleans. Good job!
Yang- Interpreting the non-linear pH dependence of alumosilicates dissolution: Effects of Al content and structural ordering, GEOC: Division of Geochemistry
Jun- In situ probe of interfacial energies for CaCO3 heterogeneously nucleated on environmentally relevant substrates, COLL: Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry
Hu- Effects of anions on heterogeneous hydrous Fe(III) oxides precipitation on quartz, COLL: Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry
Jun- Nanoparticle formation during geologic CO2 sequestration, ENVR: Division of Environmental Chemistry
Ray- Effects of surface hydrophilicity and functional group of organic coated substrates on iron(III) (hydr)oxide nucleation, GEOC: Division of Geochemistry
Hu- Heterogeneous nucleation, and growth of iron(III) (hydr)oxides on quartz, mica, and aluminum oxide: Effects of surface energy, charge, adsorption, and lattice mismatch, GEOC: Division of Geochemistry
Neil- Redox processes influencing arsenic mobilization and attenuation at mineral-water interfaces during managed aquifer recharge, GEOC: Division of Geochemistry
Yang- Reactivity of surface species on mixed-oxides: Structural dependence of Si reactivity in alumosilicates, COLL: Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry
March 22, 2013: Congratulations! Yandi successfully gave our department seminar.
March 2013: Prof. Jun attended the Royal Society of Chemistry's Editors' Symposium 2013, Brussels, Belgium.
February 23, 2013: Prof. Jun, Chelsea, and Doyoon gave hands-on demonstration for female high school students and teachers (>110 participants) to introduce environmental nanochemistry and environmental engineering (nanoparticles and managed aquifer recharge), and talked about engineering career experience. This is as a part of the 2013 Women in Engineering Day event.
February 21-22, 2013: Prof. Jun participated in an NSF Materials Genome Initiative sponsored workshop, Arlington, VA. The detailed information is available at the following websites. NSF MGI Workshop and the Whitehouse Website. A report about this workshop was published in Ceramic Tech Today. Photo credit: ACerS and De Guire. |
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January 31 and February 1: The ENCL members attended the SAXS workshop at the Argonne National Lab.
January 18, 2013: Prof. Jun became the Graduate Program Director of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering.
January 2, 2013: Welcome! Mr. Haesung Jung joined our research group!
January 1, 2013: The special focus issue on Geologic Carbon Sequestration in Environmental Science & Technology was published on January 1st 2013. Prof. Jun served as the lead guest editor. The entire special issue is accessible free of charge. |
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January 1, 2013: Prof. Jun became an editorial board member for the Royal Society of Chemistry's Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts (Formerly the Journal of Environmental Monitoring).
December 20, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "Effects of Formation Conditions on the Physico-Chemical Properties, Aggregation, and Phase Transformation of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles," has been accepted to Langmuir. Link to the paper
November 16, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "Formation of Iron(III) Hydroxides on Polyaspartate- and Alginate-Coated SiO2: Effects of Substrate Hydrophilicity and Functional Groups at the Surface,” has been accepted to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper
November 10, 2012: Welcome to Environmental NanoChemistry Lab! Jessica, Chelsea, Yi, Yujia, Qingyun, Doyoon, Lijie, James, and Prof. Jun offered a learning lab as a part of “Moving and Shaking: An Introduction to Engineering” for students in grades 6-8. During this program, we ran four learning modules related to water treatments and climate change.
November 6, 2012: Congratulations! Our feature article entitled "Impacts of Geochemical Reactions on Geologic Carbon Sequestration," has been accepted to Environmental Science & Technology. The authors are Drs. Young-Shin Jun, Daniel E. Giammar, and Charles J. Werth. Link to the paper
November 1, 2012: Our New Genergation Engineers! Sophomore undergraduate students had a tour to the Advanced Coal and Energy Research Facility as a part of ChE 351 course (Engineering Analaysis of Chemical Systems) and learned how to link what they learned in class to the real process units.
October 27, 2012: Yunke Liu and James Cooper (our undergraduate researchers) presented in the 2012 Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium. They got a lot of attentions from the visitors. Good job!
October 16-17, 2012: Prof. Jun participated in a National Science Foundation funded EarthCube Early Career Strategic Visioning Workshop at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. The EarthCube is a bold initiative by the NSF to advance research and understanding of Earth systems through a robust cyberinfrastructure that enables cross-disciplinary science. |
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September 18, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "Biotite Dissolution in Brine at Varied Temperatures and CO2 Pressures: Its Activation Energy and Potential CO2 Intercalation," has been accepted to Langmuir. Link to the paper
September 14, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "Structure-Dependent Interactions between Alkali Feldspars and Organic Compounds: Implications for Reactions in Geologic Carbon Sequestration," has been accepted to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper.
September 1, 2012: Congratulations! Our group received a new grant from the National Science Foundation's Environmental Chemical Sciences Program. |
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August 20, 2012: Congratulations! Chloe An (High school researcher, STARS program) has been selected to receive the LMI Aerospace Inc. Award for Excellence in Research for an outstanding research paper in the area of engineering (based on summer research in our research group). |
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July 1, 2012: Congratulations! Our group received a new grant from the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. Through this project, we will collaborate with Prof. Don Zhang (Peking University, China), Prof. Yun Moon Lim (Yonsei University, South Korea), and Prof. Ruben Juanes (MIT). |
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June, 2012: Welcome summer researchers! The ENCL group members welcome summer researchers, Jena Lococo (REU-UG), Whitney Wong (REU-UG) and Chloe An (STARS-high school). Yunke (WUStL's UG) continues to conduct his research during this summer. Hope all of your summer experiences are exciting and enjoyable!
May 30, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "In situ Determination of Interfacial Energies between Heterogeneously Nucleated CaCO3 and Quartz Substrates: Thermodynamics of CO2 Mineral Trapping," has been accepted to Environmental Science & Technology. This article was chosen as one of featured research papers in the ES&T website. Link to the paper
May 22, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled "Arsenic Mobilization and Attenuation by Mineral-Water Interactions: Implications for Managed Aquifer Recharge" has been accepted to the special issue for “2012 Emerging Investigators” of Journal of Environmental Monitoring. Link to the paper
and Link to the 2012 Emerging Investigators' Profile (Please look at pages 3-4 for Prof. Jun's interview)
**This article was chosen as Top Ten most Accessed Articles in Journal of Environmental Monitoring (ESPI) in July 2012 and August 2012.
May 4, 2012: Congratulations! Our paper entitled “Na+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ in Brines Affect Supercritical CO2–Brine–Biotite Interactions: Ion Exchange, Biotite Dissolution, and Illite Precipitation” has been accepted to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper
April 27, 2012: Congratulations! Our DOE-EFRC collaboration project paper has been accetped to Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. The title of the paper is "Energetic and structural studies of the amorphous Ca1-xMgxCO3 • nH2O (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) systems." Link to the paper
April 25, 2012: Congratulations! Our GISAXS paper on "Environmentally Abundant Anions Influence the Nucleation, Growth, Ostwald Ripening, and Aggregation of Hydrous Fe(III) Oxides" has been accepted to Langmuir. Link to the paper
February 25, 2012: Prof. Jun and Jessica gave hands-on demonstration for female high school students (61 participants) to introduce environmental nanochemistry and nanotechnology, environmental engineering, and talked about engineering career experience. This is as a part of the 2012 Women in Engineering Day event. We hope that two Nano moles' efforts can encourage many young nano moles' career in engineering in the future! (FYI, a mole is the mascot of the American Chemical Society)
December 2, 2011: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as“Supercritical CO2–Brine Induced Dissolution, Swelling, and Secondary Mineral Formation on Phlogopite Surfaces at 75–95oC and 75 atm” has been accepted to Energy & Environmental Science.
October 7-8, 2011: Prof. Jun was invited to participate the NSF sponsored SEES (Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability) Workshop on Natural and Engineered Carbon Sequestration, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
September 13, 2011: Congratulations! Daniel Garcia's research paper has been chosed to be one of three feature articles among more than 200 student papers in Undergraduate Research Digest.
September 12, 2011: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as "Effects of Organic Ligands on Supercritical CO2-Induced Phlogopite Dissolution and Secondary Mineral Formation," has been accepted to Chemical Geology. Link to the paper.
• Phlogopite dissolution is affected by organic ligands under GCS conditions.
• Organic ligands alter brine’s pH and form surface complexation with phlogopite.
• Supercritical CO2 extracted monocarboxylic acid from saline water.
| September, 1, 2011: Congratulations to Prof. Jun! She received the NSF CAREER Award. More detailed information | |
"The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research." from www.nsf.gov
August 8, 2011: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as "The Effects of Initial Acetate Concentration on CO2–Brine–Anorthite Interactions under Geologic CO2 Sequestration Conditions," has been accepted to Energy & Environmental Science. Link to the paper.
Acetate decreases the cumulative aqueous metal concentrations upon CO2 injection by inhibiting anorthite dissolution and facilitating secondary mineral precipitation.
June 2, 2011: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as "Biotite–Brine Interactions under Acidic Hydrothermal Conditions: Fibrous Illite, Goethite, and Kaolinite Formation and Biotite Surface Cracking," has been published to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper
March 28, 2011: Prof. Jun organized a special symposium on "Environmental and Geochemical Aspect of Sustainable Waster Reuse" with Dr. Jeffrey Yang (U.S. EPA) at the 241th American Chemical Society Spring National Meeting in Anaheim, California. This symposium has been chosen as one of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) Picks. The video is produced by the American Chemical Society. During this symposium, Chelsea successfully presented her first oral presentation at ACS meeting! Congratulations, Chelsea!
C&EN Picks: Anaheim Edition (March 28th, 2011) from ACS Pressroom on Vimeo.
* In the April 25 issue of C&EN, our symposium was introduced. Please click the following link if you want to review the report. (pages 38-39).
January 13, 2011: Congratulations! Our collaboration paper with researchers in biomedica engineering and the school of medicine has been published to Journal of the Royal Society Interface. This paper is entitled as “Nanogel Surface Coatings for Improved Single-Molecule Imaging Substrates” Link to the paper
December 28, 2010: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as “Effects of Salinity and the Extent of Water on Supercritical CO2-Induced Phlogopite Dissolution and Secondary Mineral Formation,” has been published to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper.
Both salinity and the extent of water affect the interactions of CO2, saline water, and clay minerals, and potentially influence the fate and transport of CO2.
October 21, 2010: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as “Viability and Metal Reduction of Shewanella Oneidensis MR-1 under CO2 stress: Implications for Ecological Effects of CO2 Leakage from Geologic CO2 Sequestration,” has been published to Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper.
CO2 leakage to shallow groundwater and soil/sediments from geologic CO2 sequestration sites influences the viability and metal reduction of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1.
September 15, 2010: Congratulations! Our paper entitled as "In Situ Observations of Nanoparticle Early Development Kinetics at Mineral-Water Interfaces" has been published to Environmental Science & Technology.
Using x-ray scattering, this study quantitatively and qualitatively monitors highly amorphous iron oxide nanoparticles’ formation and morphology evolution in real time. Link to the paper
June 4, 2010: Congratulations, Dr. Shao and Jessica! Our paper entitled as "Dissolution and Precipitation of Clay Minerals under Geologic CO2 Sequestration Conditions: CO2-Brine-Phlogopite Interactions" has been published in Environmental Science & Technology. Link to the paper
Announcement!
Environmental NanoChemistry Course (EECE 534) will be offered in every spring semester. Please click the below link to see more detailed information.
Our research group interests
Environmental Chemistry |
| Surface/Physical Chemistry |
| Environmental Engineering |
| Biogeochemistry |
| Nanotechnology |
Our research group (ENCL) information (PDF)
Chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and mechanisms of environmental interfacial reactions.
Reactions at dynamic water-mineral interfaces: dissolution/precipitation, adsorption/desorption, passivation/activation, relaxation/reconstruction, and reduction/oxidation.
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A more comprehensive analysis of the risks associated with CO2 geologic sequestration strategies related to climate changes.
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Sustainable engineering solutions to alleviate the climate change impacts on water supply.
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Physico-chemical reaction mechanisms during aquifer storage, treatment, and recovery using water reuse to secure underground sources for drinking waters (USDWs).
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Scaling up from microscopic to macroscopic observations in aqueous systems.
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Development of new environmental catalysts for remediating contaminated water and soils.
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Heavy metal adsorption and incorporation to manganese (hydr)oxides.
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Structure, reactivity, and antimicrobial activity of iron and manganese oxide nanoparticles in aqueous systems.
Mechanisms of oxide film growth at nanoscale in aqueous systems.
Structure and reactivity of oxide thin films on mineral surfaces.
Effects of organic compounds and microbial biofilm on mineral dissolution/precipitation.
Biomineralization and bio-inspired chemistry.