Chemical Engineering and Catalysis

Biography

Dr. Mamata Mohapatra received her Ph.D. from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. She got her post-doctoral experience from University of Waterloo, Canada by availing BOYSCAST fellowship. She joined at Hydro& Electrometallurgy department, CSIR-IMMT in 2006 (October) as Jr.Scientist and has been undertaking research independently on interdisciplinary field of research in aqueous processing of ores and secondaries, synthesis and surface modification of transition metal oxide/ oxalate and carbonate materials for environment and energy application. She has scientifically involved in carrying out experiments from lab to large scale for industrial sector. Her investigation of the adsorption behavior of various iron oxide minerals/waste materials for water toxins such as fluoride, arsenic, heavy metals contribute to eco-mineralogical development of adsorbents. She has executed a number of projects as principal, as Co-Investigator and member in some major projects, flagship projects and international collaborative project (taken the responsibility as Principal Research Scientist for the INDO-AUS Strategic Research Fund program supported by DST, India and Australia Strategic Research Fund, Australia). She has many contributory well-cited publications in international peer review journals (about 75) in collaboration with IIT, Kanpur, Utkal University (India), KIIT, Murdoch University (Australia), and WATLab (Canada). Her work has received 2329 citations with h index of 24. She has successfully supervised 3 PhD students, 12 M.Sc students, 2 M.Tech students.

Research Interest

1.Material development through dissolution and precipitation of metal values from primary and secondary sources: Waste residues generated by industrial processes are the major source of environmental contamination. Recycling the valuable part of these wastes instead of landfill is an important alternative from both environmental and economic perspective. Chelation/ surfactant mediated leaching process were developed for better selective recovery of valuable metals. Oxalate materials are also developed from the leached solution for value addition 2.Synthesis/conversion and characterizations of pure/doped/mixed iron oxides based materials: Tuning the shape of nanoparticles can remarkably change their activity and selectivity through variations in surface atomic configurations, which have a significant effect on their morphology-dependent properties. The various phase and morphology of iron oxide based materials can be utilised as electrode and as gas sensor materials, considering their environmental sustainability and cost effectiveness. Particularly the metal doped iron oxide samples developed for energy storing exhibit many fold super capacitive capacities. Efferts have made for synergistic application of developed materials. The kinetics of formation of nano iron oxides has also reported using innovative efficient solvents without any precipitating agent. Synthetic expertise has also extended to other nano metal oxide/ ceramic materials with superior physical properties. 3.Treatment of metal contaminated water by synthetic/ waste metal oxide material: Both synthetic as well as a variety of waste overburden/slime containing iron oxide phase have been used as adsorbent and systematic adsorption study for toxic ion contaminating synthetic solutions as well as effluents are reported. 4.Synthesis of iron based pure and poly metallic oxalate: Transition and inner transition oxalates are mainly used as precursor for preparing oxalate coordination polymer for evaluating magnetic and electronic hybrid composites. Manipulation of solution-chemical variables such as pH, reagent concentrations, as well as the mode of reagent additions will be done for optimizing the precipitation/ nucleation of above oxalates. Their electrochemical applications are evaluated.