UROP Proceedings 2010-11

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular EngineeringSchool of EngineeringSelf-assembling Peptide Hydrogel as Enzyme-sensitive Protein ReleaseDepotAdvisor : CHAU Ying / CBMEStudent : FENG Teng / CBPE(UROP1100, Fall 2010)Self-assembling peptides can form hydrogel under physiological conditions, and havepromising potential and applications in tissue engineering and drug delivery. In recent decades,researchers have found and synthesized many different self-assembling peptides andcharacterized their structures. Some self-assembling peptides themselves are sensitive tospecific enzymes, and some others can be degraded after modifications such as inserting anenzyme cleavable sequence. In this project, (IEGR) 4 , a short peptide sequence, is tested to seeif it can form hydrogel under physiological condition. The self-assembling and gellingcapabilities of this peptide are studied by dynamical mechanical analysis and atomic forcemicroscopy. Degree of enzyme degradation by Factor Xa is studied by high-pressure liquidchromatography.Synthesis of Mesoporous Carbon as Anodes Materials for Lithium IonBatteriesAdvisor : CHEN Guohua / CBMEStudent : XU Lang / CENG(UROP1000, Summer 2011)Mesoporous carbon serves as a good alternative to the anode material for lithium ion batteries.Ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-3 was synthesized using SBA-15 silica as the template andsucrose as the carbon precursor. Characterizations were done for the synthesized samplesusing nitrogen physisorption, XRD and TEM. The synthesized CMK-3 was assembled intocoin cells and their performance was tested.Techno-economic Analysis of Hydrogen ProductionAdvisor : LAM Koon Fung / CBMEStudent : LEI Ho Man / CEEV(UROP1000, Summer 2011)Distributed hydrogen economy is a promising topic in the transport sector. However, ashydrogen can be produced from various materials by many different processes. This projectfocuses on analyzing the feasibility of distributed hydrogen production in the world, in termsof availability of raw materials, technology and microeconomics. Finally, the macroeconomicis then assessed on the global impact of distributed hydrogen production.26