ElectraLith, a Monash spinout, makes Forbes Asia 100 To Watch 2025

Monash University spinout ElectraLith named in Forbes Asia 100 To Watch 2025. ElectraLith was spun out of Monash Chemical and Biological Engineering based on research from Professor Huanting Wang, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow, along with his research team. Now based in the Monash Innovation Labs, ElectraLith's proprietary Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE-R) offers a more sustainable and efficient method for lithium production. Unlike traditional methods, DLE-R eliminates the need for water and chemicals, significantly reducing its environmental impact and cost. DLE-R has produced battery grade lithium hydroxide from a range of sources, including from a highly contaminated and low concentration brine from the Paradox Basin in the United States, making it a game-changer for the industry. Read the full article in Forbes Asia LLC here https://lnkd.in/dTxKYtew Learn more about ElectraLith here https://lnkd.in/g-DqTUz4 Monash Engineering #ThisIsMonashEngineering #GreenLithium #DeepTech #DirectLithiumExtraction #Innovation #Collaboration Watch video here https://lnkd.in/gEgy8mmY

Thrilled to announce the acceptance of our paper in Sustainable Energy & Fuels from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Our research, titled "Tunable Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolving Activity of Nickel-dithiolene Coordination Polymers," explores how we can manipulate the intrinsic properties, such as the film thickness and surface morphology of a nickel-triphenylenehexathiolate coordination polymer, to tune its electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity. This work highlights a significant advance in materials synthesis, with a mild one-pot solvothermal method leading to a nanocluster morphology that resulted in a tunable catalytic overpotential and a 91% faradaic efficiency for hydrogen production. Grateful for the incredible teamwork with my co-authors Tyler Pham, and Prof. Smaranda Marinescu! Check out the full findings here: https://lnkd.in/dUMqH-wB #Chemistry #MaterialsScience #HydrogenEconomy #Electrochemistry #Sustainability #Research #MaterialChemistry

🔬 Bridging two worlds in catalysis The research group of Constanze Neumann has developed a new strategy: click-heterogenization. By anchoring soluble catalysts in porous MOF materials, the approach combines the precision of homogeneous catalysis with the reusability of heterogeneous systems. The results have just been published open access in JACS. 🧩 New method: Click-heterogenization anchors soluble phosphine ligands in MOFs in a single step. 🔁 Recyclable: Catalysts retain full performance and can be reused with minimal leaching. 🔧 Retrofit-capable: Damaged ligands can be removed in salty water, MOFs reloaded, and re-employed. 🧪 Industrial relevance: Demonstrated in hydroformylation, showing stable activity and product selectivity. 👉 Read the full article on our website for all details https://lnkd.in/etcBdAUR #Catalysis #Chemistry #Sustainability #Innovation #ClickChemistry #MOFs #Research #GreenChemistry #HomogeneousCatalysis #HeterogeneousCatalysis

Clean energy breakthrough: harnessing power from saltwater and freshwater When seawater and freshwater meet, a natural process releases energy. Known as osmotic energy, this renewable source has long been recognised as a clean and virtually unlimited form of power. The challenge has been finding efficient ways to capture it. A team of researchers - led by PhD candidate Yumeng Guo of Monash Chemical and Biological Engineering - has demonstrated a new approach that significantly improves energy generation from this process. Their work focuses on reverse electrodialysis, a technique that uses thin membranes to control the movement of salt ions and produce electricity. Conventional polymer-based membranes are practical to manufacture on a large scale but are less effective because of their uneven structure, which slows ion movement and reduces efficiency. To address this, the researchers developed membranes with precisely structured internal channels that allow ions to flow more easily. Tests showed the new membranes could achieve record levels of power output - both in controlled laboratory conditions and in real-world experiments using seawater and river water. Read the research article published in NANO MICRO Small Journal here https://lnkd.in/gyftvkd6 #YumengGuo #XiangSun #QianxiZhang #ZeXianLow #ProfessorLeiJiang Professor Huanting Wang, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow, Monash Chemical and Biological Engineering Monash Engineering Monash University #ThisIsMonashEngineering #OsmoticEnergy #Electrodialysis #IonSelectiveMembranes #Innovation

🌊⚡ Harnessing power from saltwater and freshwater When seawater and freshwater meet, they naturally release energy – a renewable resource known as osmotic energy. Until now, capturing it efficiently has been the challenge. A Monash team has developed new membranes with precisely structured channels that allow salt ions to move more freely. The result? Record levels of power output, demonstrated both in the lab and in real-world tests using seawater and river water. This breakthrough brings us closer to harnessing osmotic energy as a scalable source of clean power. Read more about the research below. #CleanEnergy #ResearchImpact

A breakthrough in scalable single-atom catalysts for clean energy Researchers from Monash Chemical and Biological Engineering and Monash Materials Science and Engineering in Clayton and Suzhou Campuses have developed a new way to make powerful catalysts that could improve clean energy technologies. These catalysts are made from single platinum atoms spread very densely across a surface, which makes them highly cost-effective and energy efficient. Creating them however, has always been very difficult. In this study, researchers used a simple method called vacuum arc discharge to quickly and reliably make platinum single-atom catalysts. They achieved a record density of platinum atoms anchored onto a special metal alloy and stabilised with carbon nanotubes, which helps keep the structure intact even at extremely high temperatures (up to 1000 °C). What makes this method exciting is that it works not just for platinum, but also for other valuable metals like iridium. The carbon can also be derived from waste!  It’s also scalable - researchers were able to produce gram-level amounts in just half an hour. Read the full research article in Advanced Portfolio Science here - https://lnkd.in/gF-V4ubK #HongzheHe #XiaoqiongRen #RuoqunZhang Sasha Yang Jinxing Gu Ke Wang #BinbinQian Professor Ning chen | Professor Lian Zhang | Adjunct Professor Jianglong Yu | Adjunct Professor #YuanCheng | Associate Professor #BaiQianDai ARC Research Hub for Value-Added Processing of Underutilised Carbon Waste #CleanSolidFuelLaboratory Monash University #ThisIsMonashEngineering #VacuumArcDischarge #Sustainability #CleanEnergyTechnologies #SingleAtomCatalysts #GlobalImpact

Accessing two stereoenriched 1,3-chiral centers from alkenes is hard. We report a Ni–H catalyzed dynamic kinetic asymmetric transformation of cyclic phosphinates to do just that. https://lnkd.in/dydktj9B Lara Lavrencic Uttam Dhawa Hu's lab at EPFL EPFL Chemistry NCCR Catalysis

🆕 🆕 🆕 New paper in Nature Catalysis! Microenvironment effects in electrochemical CO2 reduction from first-principles multiscale modelling by Profs. Sophia Haussener and Nuria Lopez, Drs. Ranga Rohit Seemakurthi, PhD, Santiago Morandi and Pavle Nikačević from ICIQ, and Francesca Lorenzutti from EPFL Ecole polytechnique f´ed´erale de Lausanne. https://lnkd.in/dATp5ESC https://lnkd.in/dBkkDHBh

🔉 I’m thrilled to share that our latest article has just been published in the Journal of Energy Storage: Harnessing chitin nanocrystals and PEDOT nanocomposites: Toward eco-friendly conductive materials for supercapacitor applications” In this work, we developed a bio-based conductive material by combining PEDOT with chitin nanocrystals (ChNCs). This hybrid system combines the electrical conductivity of PEDOT with the renewable, sustainable nature of chitin. Our study highlights a green synthesis route that yields well-dispersed PEDOT@ChNC nanostructures with excellent colloidal stability and outstanding electrochemical performance for next-generation supercapacitors. We also successfully demonstrated the fabrication of a solid-state supercapacitor based on this material. 🙏 I am profoundly grateful to my supervisors, Prof. Nouha Ghorbel and Prof. Sami Boufi, whose guidance, encouragement, and expertise were instrumental throughout this journey. I also sincerely thank Prof. Philippe Daniel and Prof. Jean-François Pilard from Le Mans University, and Prof. Jean-Luc Putaux from Grenoble, for their invaluable support, insightful discussions, and contributions that made this work possible. 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dzQFPxen #EnergyStorage #Supercapacitors #ConductivePolymers #Chitin #GreenChemistry #Nanocomposites #Research

If you wonder how to elegantly prepare carbamates, check out this exciting application of electrochemistry by Waldvogel and co-workers. Hectogram-Scale Synthesis of Carbamates Using Electrochemical Hofmann Rearrangement in Flow | Organic Process Research & Development https://lnkd.in/dabeF5Gr #OPRD ACS Publications