Kindle Williams
Postdoctoral Scholar, Chemical Engineering
Professional Education
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Doctor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2022)
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Master of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2018)
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Bachelor of Science, The University of Alabama, Chemical Engineering with majors in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry (2016)
Stanford Advisors
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William Tarpeh, Postdoctoral Research Mentor
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William Tarpeh, Postdoctoral Faculty Sponsor
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Kindle is a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. William Tarpeh's group. She studies nutrient recovery from wastewaters, with a particular focus on electrochemical techniques for the conversion and recovery of inorganic nitrogen species. She is interested in translating technologies for nutrient recovery to practice.
All Publications
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Flexible Electrochemical Stripping for Wastewater Ammonia Recovery with On-Demand Product Tunability
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LETTERS
2024
View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00366
View details for Web of Science ID 001263986100001
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Engineering a molecular electrocatalytic system for energy-efficient ammonia production from wastewater nitrate
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
2024
View details for DOI 10.1039/d4ee01727g
View details for Web of Science ID 001268359400001
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Long-Term Robustness and Failure Mechanisms of Electrochemical Stripping for Wastewater Ammonia Recovery.
ACS environmental Au
2024; 4 (2): 89-105
Abstract
Nitrogen in wastewater has negative environmental, human health, and economic impacts but can be recovered to reduce the costs and environmental impacts of wastewater treatment and chemical production. To recover ammonia/ammonium (total ammonia nitrogen, TAN) from urine, we operated electrochemical stripping (ECS) for over a month, achieving 83.4 ± 1.5% TAN removal and 73.0 ± 2.9% TAN recovery. With two reactors, we recovered sixteen 500-mL batches (8 L total) of ammonium sulfate (20.9 g/L TAN) approaching commercial fertilizer concentrations (28.4 g/L TAN) and often having >95% purity. While evaluating the operation and maintenance needs, we identified pH, full-cell voltage, product volume, and water flux into the product as informative process monitoring parameters that can be inexpensively and rapidly measured. Characterization of fouled cation exchange and omniphobic membranes informs cleaning and reactor modifications to reduce fouling with organics and calcium/magnesium salts. To evaluate the impact of urine collection and storage on ECS, we conducted experiments with urine at different levels of dilution with flush water, extents of divalent cation precipitation, and degrees of hydrolysis. ECS effectively treated urine under all conditions, but minimizing flush water and ensuring storage until complete hydrolysis would enable energy-efficient TAN recovery. Our experimental results and cost analysis motivate a multifaceted approach to improving ECS's technical and economic viability by extending component lifetimes, decreasing component costs, and reducing energy consumption through material, reactor, and process engineering. In summary, we demonstrated urine treatment as a foothold for electrochemical nutrient recovery from wastewater while supporting the applicability of ECS to seven other wastewaters with widely varying characteristics. Our findings will facilitate the scale-up and deployment of electrochemical nutrient recovery technologies, enabling a circular nitrogen economy that fosters sanitation provision, efficient chemical production, and water resource protection.
View details for DOI 10.1021/acsenvironau.3c00058
View details for PubMedID 38525023
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10958661
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Electrochemical Wastewater Refining: A Vision for Circular Chemical Manufacturing.
Journal of the American Chemical Society
2023
Abstract
Wastewater is an underleveraged resource; it contains pollutants that can be transformed into valuable high-purity products. Innovations in chemistry and chemical engineering will play critical roles in valorizing wastewater to remediate environmental pollution, provide equitable access to chemical resources and services, and secure critical materials from diminishing feedstock availability. This perspective envisions electrochemical wastewater refining─the use of electrochemical processes to tune and recover specific products from wastewaters─as the necessary framework to accelerate wastewater-based electrochemistry to widespread practice. We define and prescribe a use-informed approach that simultaneously serves specific wastewater-pollutant-product triads and uncovers a mechanistic understanding generalizable to broad use cases. We use this approach to evaluate research needs in specific case studies of electrocatalysis, stoichiometric electrochemical conversions, and electrochemical separations. Finally, we provide rationale and guidance for intentionally expanding the electrochemical wastewater refining product portfolio. Wastewater refining will require a coordinated effort from multiple expertise areas to meet the urgent need of extracting maximal value from complex, variable, diverse, and abundant wastewater resources.
View details for DOI 10.1021/jacs.3c01142
View details for PubMedID 37642501