Conor Waldron

Conor joined the department in 2015 after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from University College Dublin in 2015. Conor had previous experience working in industry and research having completed internships in Ireland’s biopharmaceutical industry and also in Yantai, China in polymer science as well as undergoing a research project in the University of California Santa Barbara. He is now focused on developing micro reactor technology to enable easier studies of heterogeneous catalysis oxidation reactions which have applications in green chemistry and potentially in second generation biofuel production. 

Research project

Title:

•    Micro-reactor development
•    Catalysed Selective Aerobic Oxidation of Alcohols

Micro reactors are reactors with at least one dimension in the micro scale and their small size gives them many enhanced properties compared to conventionally sized reactors. Typically a micro reactor will have vastly superior heat and mass transfer properties enabling them to achieve a much greater control over reaction conditions than traditional reactors. This allows among other things, for highly exothermic reactions to be carried out safely at isothermal conditions and for catalytic reactions to have sufficient mass transfer so they operate in the kinetic regime. Having a micro reactor to preform these tasks enables fast and effective information gathering about a reaction that can then be used to optimise the reaction, the catalyst and ultimately to aid in the design of industrial processes. Conor’s PhD will focus on developing greater in situ measurement techniques for micro reactors to enable more efficient information gathering for future reactions of interest.

Education

Bachelor of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, University College Dublin, Ireland, 2015