Renewable Engine Post-Doctoral Researcher Presents at GFMAT-2 Conference
IT Sligo’s Post-Doctoral Researcher, Dr Vignesh Kumaravel, attended the 2nd Global Forum on Advanced Materials and Technologies for sustainable development (GFMAT-2), which was organised by the American Ceramic Society, held during July in Toronto, Canada.
The key issues, challenges and opportunities of functional materials for health, energy and environmental applications were addressed at the conference. Dr Kumaravel delivered an oral presentation entitled “Thermal stability of molybdenum doped titania anatase photocatalyst for indoor building materials”. His talk outlined the influence of molybdenum doping on the thermal stability and photocatalytic activity of titania. He demonstrated some important experimental and theoretical results for the high stability of molybdenum doped titania and its photocatalytic water disinfection efficiency.
Sustainability was a key theme of the conference, which has become an integral component of research this century. The key motivating factors of this are; (a) rapid urbanisation, population growth, and ageing population; (b) the large amount of waste yearly disposed to landfill; (c) the global impoverishing of natural resources and environment (fossil fuels, minerals, water and energy scarcity); (d) declining infrastructure; (e) the emergency of carbon dioxide emissions, and; (f) climate change.