Hedwig, Sebastian

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Hedwig
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Sebastian
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Hedwig, Sebastian

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From trace to pure. Pilot-scale scandium recovery from TiO2 acid waste

2023-04-06, Hedwig, Sebastian, Yagmurlu, Bengi, Peters, Edward Michael, Misev, Victor, Hengevoss, Dirk, Dittrich, Carsten, Forsberg, Kerstin, Constable, Edwin C., Lenz, Markus

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Nanofiltration-enhanced solvent extraction of scandium from TiO acid waste

2022-04-27, Yagmurlu, Bengi, Huang, Danyu, von Arx, Oliver, Dittrich, Carsten, Constable, Edwin, Friedrich, Bernd, Hedwig, Sebastian, Lenz, Markus

Scandium is a critical raw material with a technological potential to reduce transportation costs and CO2 emissions. However, global supply and market adoption are crucially impaired by the lack of high-grade Sc ores and recovery strategies. A tandem nanofiltration solvent extraction route is demonstrated to enable effective Sc recovery from real-world acid waste from the chloride TiO2 production route. The process involving several filtration stages, solvent extraction, and precipitation was optimized, ultimately producing >97% pure (NH4)3ScF6.

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Organic solvent free PbI2 recycling from perovskite solar cells using hot water

2023-04-05, Schmidt, Felix, Amrein, Meret, Hedwig, Sebastian, Kober-Czerny, Manuel, Paracchino, Adriana, Holappa, Ville, Suhonen, Riikka, Schäffer, Andreas, Constable, Edwin C., Snaith, Henry J., Lenz, Markus

Perovskite solar cells represent an emerging and highly promising renewable energy technology. However, the most efficient perovskite solar cells critically depend on the use of lead. This represents a possible environmental concern potentially limiting the technologies’ commercialization. Here, we demonstrate a facile recycling process for PbI2, the most common lead-based precursor in perovskite absorber material. The process uses only hot water to effectively extract lead from synthetic precursor mixes, plastic- and glass-based perovskites (92.6 – 100% efficiency after two extractions). When the hot extractant is cooled, crystalline PbI2 in high purity (> 95.9%) precipitated with a high yield: from glass-based perovskites, the first cycle of extraction / precipitation was sufficient to recover 94.4 ± 5.6% of Pb, whereas a second cycle yielded another 10.0 ± 5.2% Pb, making the recovery quantitative. The solid extraction residue remaining is consequently deprived of metals and may thus be disposed as non-hazardous waste. Therefore, exploiting the highly temperature-dependent solubility of PbI2 in water provides a straightforward, easy to implement way to efficiently extract lead from PSC at the end-of-life and deposit the extraction residues in a cost-effective manner, mitigating the potential risk of lead leaching at the perovskites’ end-of-life.

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Recovery of scandium from acidic waste solutions by means of polymer inclusion membranes

2022, Hedwig, Sebastian, Kraus, Manuel, Amrein, Meret, Stiehm, Johannes, Constable, Edwin C., Lenz, Markus

Scandium is a raw material with properties that promise considerable potential for application in alloys to enable aviation fuel savings and as dopants for use in sustainable energy production using solid oxide fuel cells. Despite these attractive properties, scandium is rarely used due to its scarcity and unreliable supply. Therefore, new strategies for scandium recovery are of economic priority. In this study, polymer inclusion membranes (PIMs) consisting of PVDF-HFP, 2-NPOE and DEHPA, were optimised for selective scandium separation from real TiO2 production waste. With the optimised system, >60% of the scandium was recovered with high selectivity, resulting in scandium mole fraction at more than two orders of magnitude higher in the receiving phase than in the original waste. This suggests PIMs may be an effective way to recover scandium from bulk waste, thus easing the scarcity and insecurity that currently limit its bulk application.

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Ecotoxicity attenuation by acid-resistant nanofiltration in scandium recovery from TiO2 production waste

2023, Fekete-Kertész, Ildikó, Stirling, Tamás, Vaszita, Emese, Berkl, Zsófia, Farkas, Éva, Hedwig, Sebastian, Remmen, Kirsten, Lenz, Markus, Molnár, Mónika, Feigl, Viktória

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Sulfur amino acid status controls selenium methylation in pseudomonas tolaasii. Identification of a novel metabolite from promiscuous enzyme reactions

2021-05-26, Liu, Ying, Hedwig, Sebastian, Schäffer, Andreas, Lenz, Markus, Martinez, Mathieu

Selenium (Se) deficiency affects many millions of people worldwide, and the volatilization of methylated Se species to the atmosphere may prevent Se from entering the food chain. Despite the extent of Se deficiency, little is known about fluxes in volatile Se species and their temporal and spatial variation in the environment, giving rise to uncertainty in atmospheric transport models. To systematically determine fluxes, one can rely on laboratory microcosm experiments to quantify Se volatilization in different conditions. Here, it is demonstrated that the sulfur (S) status of bacteria crucially determines the amount of Se volatilized. Solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography mass spectrometry showed that Pseudomonas tolaasii efficiently and rapidly (92% in 18 h) volatilized Se to dimethyl diselenide and dimethyl selenyl sulfide through promiscuous enzymatic reactions with the S metabolism. However, when the cells were supplemented with cystine (but not methionine), a major proportion of the Se (∼48%) was channeled to thus-far-unknown, nonvolatile Se compounds at the expense of the previously formed dimethyl diselenide and dimethyl selenyl sulfide (accounting for <4% of total Se). Ion chromatography and solid-phase extraction were used to isolate unknowns, and electrospray ionization ion trap mass spectrometry, electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and microprobe nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry were used to identify the major unknown as a novel Se metabolite, 2-hydroxy-3-(methylselanyl)propanoic acid. Environmental S concentrations often exceed Se concentrations by orders of magnitude. This suggests that in fact S status may be a major control of selenium fluxes to the atmosphere. IMPORTANCE Volatilization from soil to the atmosphere is a major driver for Se deficiency. “Bottom-up” models for atmospheric Se transport are based on laboratory experiments quantifying volatile Se compounds. The high Se and low S concentrations in such studies poorly represent the environment. Here, we show that S amino acid status has in fact a decisive effect on the production of volatile Se species in Pseudomonas tolaasii. When the strain was supplemented with S amino acids, a major proportion of the Se was channeled to thus-far-unknown, nonvolatile Se compounds at the expense of volatile compounds. This hierarchical control of the microbial S amino acid status on Se cycling has been thus far neglected. Understanding these interactions—if they occur in the environment—will help to improve atmospheric Se models and thus predict drivers of Se deficiency.