Hassan S Bazzi

Title : Using polyisobutylene supported sulfur ligands for metal sequestering

Abstract:

Whether it is industry, agriculture, research experiments, or just ordinary activities, modern societies in the 21st century produce unwanted waste.   In some cases, this waste is concentrated and can be easily dealt with. In other cases, such waste can be minimized; this has been demonstrated in the development of environmentally benign syntheses that have used polymer-bound metal catalysts to minimize chemical waste in homogeneous catalysis. However, waste most often cannot be completely eliminated. Even if it is minimized, unwanted by-products from industrial or agricultural endeavor or from a modern city often end up in organic or aqueous waste streams in a highly diluted form. Herein, we report the use of Polyisobutylene (PIB) as a polymeric support for metal sequestration in organic solutions. PIB is functionalized to convert its terminal C=C into metal sequestering groups (carboxylic acid, thiol or amine group). The use of a cleavable linker to regenerate the PIB-sequestrant is also studied.

Biography:

Dr. Hassan S. Bazzi is the associate dean for research and professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University at Qatar, a branch campus of Texas A&M University. Dr. Bazzi received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry and organic chemistry, respectively, from the American University of Beirut (1996 and 1998), and his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry with Dean’s Honor List from McGill University (2003). He worked briefly with the United Nations as a chemical weapons inspector in Iraq before doing a postdoctoral research fellowship at Université de Montréal. He joined Texas A&M at Qatar as assistant professor in 2004, was promoted to associate professor (2009), and then to full professor (2014).