Dr. Gizele Azimi

Abstract

There is a significant global push towards recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) to enable the circular economy. Conventional recycling processes rely on pyrometallurgy or hydrometallurgy. Pyrometallurgical recycling typically requires high energy consumption and reaction temperature and generates greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrometallurgical processes also face the drawback of being reagent intensive, often requiring the large consumption of strong acids and organic solvents as well as the production of secondary streams of potentially hazardous wastes. An emerging green separation technology is supercritical fluid extraction (SCFE) that can recycle secondary resources at a low cost, with low energy consumption and high recovery efficiency. Supercritical fluids are desirable for extraction processes because of their combination of gas-like and liquid-like properties, tuneable properties, and simple separation by phase transformation. Among supercritical fluids, supercritical carbon dioxide (sc-CO₂) has shown promising results for the extraction of rare earth elements (REEs) from synthetic feeds and as well as secondary feeds. In comparison with hydrometallurgical processes, SCFE does not generate hazardous wastewater and acid fumes. The CO₂ solvent can be easily separated from products through depressurization and recycled back to the process. In this talk, the application of sc-CO₂ for the recovery of REEs from ores and electronic wastes will be presented.

Biography

Dr. Gisele Azimi is a Professor in the Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry Department at the University of Toronto (U of T) and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Urban Mining Innovations. She is the director of the Open Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM) and the director of the Laboratory for Strategic Materials (LSM). The LSM was established to tackle the global challenges associated with the supply of strategic materials (through extraction and recycling), with wide applications, particularly in renewable energy and batteries. Dr. Azimi is the first faculty member in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) at U of T who was promoted to the rank of full professor within 8 years. She has been actively collaborating with Canadian industry and government. She has also led research activities for Indigenous communities; in 2019, she advised and supervised a non-profit organization and a group of students with the design and supply of a renewable power system to a remote Indigenous community in Costa Rica. Her current research, which is focused on recycling of strategic materials, also can benefit Canadian Indigenous communities.

The national and international impact of her research is evident through the publications and citations of her original research by top international research groups. She has 97 journal papers published in internationally leading journals. She has delivered 50 invited, keynote, and plenary talks at universities (MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Tokyo, UC San Diego, McGill, Guelph, Laval) and national and international conferences (TMS, ICSOBA, COM, among others).  Since joining U of T, she has filed 10 patent applications (3 patents granted so far). The relatively large number of patents that she holds further demonstrates the utility of her work. Since 2014, she has received 15 prestigious awards, including young researcher awards, for excellence in Research, Teaching, and Leadership, “Canada Research Chair (Tier 2)”, “Emerging Leaders of Chemical Engineering (CSChE)”, “The Young Leaders Award (Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS))” – an impressive level of peer recognition for an early career faculty.

Another indication of her achievements is her ability to attract research funding. This is an outstanding amount of funding and is well beyond the norm for an early career faculty member. Her ability to attract this funding attests to the fact that she works on vitally important problems and her work is well regarded by industry and the research community. She is engaged in substantial collaboration with colleagues both at U of T and globally. Eleven major national and international companies (e.g., Tenova, Rio Tinto, Hatch, Mercedes Benz) actively support her research program, attesting to her ability to establish industry-academia relationships and the importance of her research to society.

Throughout her career, Dr. Azimi has shown a sustained commitment to community leadership. She has been an active contributor to the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE), the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) and the Electrochemical Society (ECS). She has taken over the role of Associate Editorship of the flagship journal of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE), the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering. Because of her vital contributions, she was awarded “The 2020 Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering Lectureship Award”. At TMS, she has taken leadership roles and was elected as the Chair of the Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy technical committee within the Extraction and Processing Division (EPD) of TMS. She is also the lead organizer of the Rare Metal Extraction and Processing symposium that is held annually during the TMS meeting. Because of her impactful contributions to this society, she was awarded “The 2020 TMS Young Leaders Award”. In addition to the above journals, she has taken the role of Associate Editor in the Scientific Reports (Nature Group), Resources, Conservation, and Recycling (Elsevier, IF: 13.7), and Waste Management (Elsevier, IF: 8.8) journals and she greatly contributes to raising the profile of these journals.