Filtering by
- All Subjects: Architecture
- Creators: School of Sustainability
Anthropocentric society faces a multiplicity of environmental challenges, catalyzed and perpetuated by urban-industrial culture. Many of today’s perspectives and sustainable strategies cannot accommodate the challenges’ inherent complexity. Because urban-industrial society is only projected to grow, both in enormity and influence, the only viable option is to elucidate the complexity and employ it.
A potential setting in which to frame this exploration is the intersection of urbanism, landscape, and ecology –an overlap first introduced by the theories of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism. Here, urbanization is not just discussed as an isolated phenomenon but one that is embedded within and responding to a variety of systems and scales. The methodologies of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism also acknowledge artists and the visual arts as invaluable tools for realizing, communicating, and inspiring the new perspectives and modes of intervention needed to address the aforementioned urban complexity. Such artists who operate within this realm include Sissel Tolaas, Maya Lin, Katrin Sigurdardottir, David Maisel, Olafur Eliason, Mierle Ukeles, Suzanne Lacy, Steve Rowell, Mel Chin, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Case study analyses reveal many of these artists begin their investigations with provocative, searching questions situated within the realms of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. This is proceeded by relative scientific research and/or community involvement or outreach. Furthermore, the artists work within and extrapolate from a variety of other disciplines —increasing the scope and applicability of their work. The information they collect via this multidisciplinary approach is then metaphorically translated to the visual arts, where the public can not only physically or sensorially experience it, but understand and deduce its meaning and significance: public awareness being one of the more essential aspects of a sustainable society and at the root of our current struggle.
As a designer and architect, I will engage the artist’s mindset to explore the current and complex issue of resource extraction within Superior, Arizona: a topic at the core of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. While the town is not considered "urban" by standard definition, it and its surrounding landscapes are indirectly sculpted by the needs of urban society —rendering it the setting for this application. Within a group, we will begin with a searching question. We will conduct relative scientific research, engage the community of Superior, and call upon a variety of other disciplines to aid and inform our work. Through metaphor, the research and resulting discoveries will be artistically represented and composed within a designed exhibition of hopeful “things” (See Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik”). This exhibition will theoretically take place on Superior’s currently dilapidated Main Street, amid a more accessible sphere. The eventual goal of the project is to illuminate and understand the complexities of resource extraction, specifically within Superior, while also enabling public awareness and empowerment through lucidity and comprehension.
Project 1 Abstract: Ethylene Oxychlorination
The current two-step process for the industrial process of vinyl chloride production involves CuCl2 catalyzed ethylene oxychlorination to ethylene dichloride followed by thermal cracking of the latter to vinyl chloride. To date, no industrial application of a one-step process is available. To close this gap, this work evaluates a wide range of self-prepared supported CeO2 and EuOCl catalysts for one-step production of vinyl chloride from ethylene in a fixed-bed reactor at 623 773 K and 1 bar using feed ratios of C2H4:HCl:O2:Ar:He = 3:3 6:1.5 6:3:82 89.5. Among all studied systems, CeO2/ZrO2 and CeO2/Zeolite MS show the highest activity but suffer from severe combustion of ethylene, forming COx, while 20 wt.% EuOCl/γ-Al2O3 leads to the best vinyl chloride selectivity of 87% at 15.6% C2H4 conversion with complete suppression of CO2 formation and only 4% selectivity to CO conversion for over 100 h on stream. Characterization by XRD and EDX mapping reveals that much of the Eu is present in non-active phases such as Al2Eu or EuAl4, indicating that alternative synthesis methods could be employed to better utilize the metal. A linear relationship between conversion and metal loading is found for this catalyst, indicating that always part of the used Eu is available as EuOCl, while the rest forms inactive europium aluminate species. Zeolite-supported EuOCl slightly outperforms EuOCl/γ Al2O3 in terms of total yield, but is prone to significant coking and is unstable. Even though a lot of Eu seems locked in inactive species on EuOCl/γ Al2O3, these results indicate possible savings of nearly 16,000 USD per kg of catalyst compared to a bulk EuOCl catalyst. These very promising findings constitute a crucial step for process intensification of polyvinyl chloride production and exploring the potential of supported EuOCl catalysts in industrially-relevant reactions.
Project 2 Abstract: Alkyne Semihydrogenation
Despite strongly suffering from poor noble metal utilization and a highly toxic selectivity modifier (Pb), the archetypal catalyst applied for the three-phase alkyne semihydrogenation, the Pb-doped Pd/CaCO3 (Lindlar catalyst), is still being utilized at industrial level. Inspired by the very recent strategies involving the modification of Pd with p-block elements (i.e., S), this work extrapolates the concept by preparing crystalline metal phosphides with controlled stoichiometry. To develop an affordable and environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional hydrogenation catalysts, nickel, a metal belonging to the same group as Pd and capable of splitting molecular hydrogen has been selected. Herein, a simple two-step synthesis procedure involving nontoxic precursors was used to synthesize bulk nickel phosphides with different stoichiometries (Ni2P, Ni5P4, and Ni12P5) by controlling the P:Ni ratios. To uncover structural and surface features, this catalyst family is characterized with an array of methods including X-ray diffraction (XRD), 31P magic-angle nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS-NMR) spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Bulk-sensitive techniques prove the successful preparation of pure phases while XPS analysis unravels the facile passivation occurring at the NixPy surface that persists even after reductive treatment. To assess the characteristic surface fingerprints of these materials, Ar sputtering was carried out at different penetration depths, reveling the presence of Ni+ and P-species. Continuous-flow three-phase hydrogenations of short-chain acetylenic compounds display that the oxidized layer covering the surface is reduced under reaction conditions, as evidenced by the induction period before reaching the steady state performance. To assess the impact of the phosphidation treatment on catalytic performance, the catalysts were benchmarked against a commercial Ni/SiO2-Al2O3 sample. While Ni/SiO2-Al2O3 presents very low selectivity to the alkene (the selectivity is about 10% at full conversion) attributed to the well-known tendency of naked nickel nanoparticles to form hydrides, the performance of nickel phosphides is highly selective and independent of P:Ni ratio. In line with previous findings on PdxS, kinetic tests indicate the occurrence of a dual-site mechanism where the alkyne and hydrogen do not compete for the same site.
This work is the subject of a publication of which I am a co-author, as cited below.
D. Albani; K. Karajovic; B. Tata; Q. Li; S. Mitchell; N. López; J. Pérez-Ramírez. Ensemble Design in Nickel Phosphide Catalysts for Alkyne Semi-Hydrogenation. ChemCatChem 2019. doi.org/10.1002/cctc.201801430
An exploration of how architecture can react to American hyper-consumption of clothing products. With the goal to raise public awareness and create systemic, sustainable change in the fashion industry, this project synthesizes each part of manufacturing, including production, consumption, and post consumption, into one local campus. By bringing manufacturing back into the daily rhythms of an urban context and combining a prototypical mix of fashion related programs, ethically minded consumers are formed.
This thesis asks the question, 'How can equitable approaches be advanced within the architectural discipline in order for architects to make increasingly meaningful social and civic impacts on vulnerable communities?' It is a product of my experience working on a project for a low-income community of color, along with my realization that I did not possess the tools to be able to design in a way that fostered equity for this community. In an attempt to design those tools for myself and question how architectural practices can be used to enhance equity in one's work, the thesis features the reimagining of several architectural approaches. The approaches take inspiration from the discipline of equitable creative placemaking, drawing from concepts such as cultural asset mapping, co-creation, and fostering community agency.