Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,

I am currently researching ways to improve the recycling and raw material extraction methods for lithium ion batteries for a potential research proposal competition. This is because current hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical processes are quite energy intensive, and not exactly environmentally friendly. Another reason is because, there has been many human rights violation reports coming from lithium and cobalt mines (key ingredients of LIB), so recycling or efficient raw material extraction could be a potential solution.

I've recently become interested in flash joule heating technology. Flash joule heating has been previously used to produce graphene from plastic waste and other carbon containing substances [1]. There has also been research on using flash joule heating to recover precious metals from certain electronic waste, such as printed circuit boards [2]. It has been reported that flash joule heating uses less energy and is much more environmentally friendly than traditional extraction processes.

Questions:
Would the flash joule heating method work for the recovery of raw materials of lithium ion batteries?

I'm also looking for a mentor for this research proposal competition. How should I go about finding mentors and does cold emailing professors really work?

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c06328
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26038-9

Thanks,
Wesley

Hi Wesley,

I can't provide any guidance on your research question as it's not an area I'm familiar with, but I can provide some advice about finding a mentor and emailing professors.

First, don't take it personally if you email a professor and don't receive a reply. Some of them (particularly the more famous ones with bigger labs) get dozens if not hundreds of emails from students at all levels (high school, college, graduate school) who want to work with them. It's more email than they can physically reply to. Others may just ignore the emails if they are not currently accepting students, but again, don't take it personally. Some might reply, some might not.

You can improve your odds by "doing your homework" and reading each professor's bio/research website before you email them. You can usually find these websites just by googling their names or looking them up on a university website. Many times these websites will have a "people" or "opportunities" section with instructions for what to do/how to contact them if you're a student, or may flat out say that they are not currently accepting new students and that will save you some time. This will also help you narrow it down to professors who do research in an area related to your interests.

What you should NOT do is just spam every professor you can find with a form email asking to work with them. I get emails like that and I'm not even a research professor (I'm a lecturer, meaning I only teach and I don't have a research lab) - so I can immediately tell that students who send me an email like that didn't bother looking me up at all. They just say something generic about being "interested in your research." Most people I know just immediately ignore/delete emails like that. Your emails should be personalized/customized to mention the professor's specific research.

Finally, rather than trying to go to professors directly, it may be worth searching for "research experience for high school students," and I believe there are programs you can apply to that will match you with a professor. Some programs might be third party/national and work with multiple universities, other universities host their own programs. Here's an example with a list of such programs: https://blog.collegevine.com/research-o ... gh-school/

Hope that helps!

Ben

Hello Ben,

Thanks for the awesome advice. I will probably start with emailing the authors of the research papers after doing a bit more literature review.

Wesley