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PhD Project at the University of Bath: Upcycling Waste Plastics into Redox-Active Electrodes for Electrochemical CO₂ Capture

Project 1803 · University of Bath · Department of Chemical Engineering

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Save this opportunity and prepare around its actual requirements. Confirm deadlines and eligibility at the original source.

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Country or region
United Kingdom
Application deadline
2026-11-29 (confirm the exact time with the source)
Funding
Competitive Engineering & Design URSA funding is open to Home and Overseas applicants; Overseas awards are capped under UKRI policy, with no percentage stated. Current general faculty policy sets a funding ceiling of three and a half years; an individual award duration is not stated. Funding covers the applicable tuition fees and includes £1,000 per year for training and a maintenance stipend (£21,805 at the 2026/27 rate; the 2027/28 amount is unconfirmed). International students must pay Student visa and Immigration Health Surcharge costs themselves.

The research opportunity

PhD Project at the University of Bath: Upcycling Waste Plastics into Redox-Active Electrodes for Electrochemical CO₂ Capture

Research question and doctoral work

This University of Bath Chemical Engineering PhD asks whether waste plastics can be upcycled into redox-active electrodes that capture and release CO₂ using electricity. Its hypothesis is that waste-derived carbon can be engineered with the pore structure, surface chemistry and redox functionality needed for electro-swing separation. This remains to be tested; neither performance nor a net environmental benefit is guaranteed.

The initial feedstock is post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET), used as a controlled model material. The researcher will systematically vary carbonisation and activation conditions to control and measure microporosity, surface functional groups and electrical conductivity. The carbon will then be functionalised with reversible CO₂-binding groups, initially using quinone chemistry. Applying an electrical potential is intended to switch the groups’ affinity for CO₂ and enable capture/release. The aim is to avoid the high-temperature regeneration used in conventional sorbent capture cycles; this does not establish that making, activating or functionalising the carbon requires no heat or energy.

The project will examine how plastic chemistry and processing history affect pore architecture, redox-site accessibility, electron and ion transport, CO₂ uptake and cycling stability. Promising materials would be integrated into a laboratory-scale electrochemical capture device and tested under increasingly realistic gas mixtures, including simulated industrial flue gas. The stated measures are capacity, selectivity, capture rate, energy consumption and long-term durability. Energy and life-cycle analysis will compare the approach with conventional sorbents and virgin-carbon alternatives to identify the processing conditions and material lifetime needed for net environmental benefit; this is not a commitment to industrial-scale capture.

Eligibility and application

Applicants need, or should be close to completing, a UK first-class or 2:1 honours degree (or international equivalent); a master’s is advantageous. A strong background in chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, electrochemistry or a related subject is expected. An interest in sustainable materials, carbon capture, porous materials and/or circular-economy technologies is required. Experience in one or more of electrochemistry, porous-carbon synthesis, polymer processing or recycling, gas adsorption/separation, materials characterisation, or life-cycle/sustainability analysis is useful but not required. The project involves materials synthesis, electrochemical testing, gas-separation experiments and quantitative data analysis, so applicants should be comfortable working across disciplines and interested in both experimental and analytical work.

Chemical Engineering requires IELTS Academic 6.5 overall, with 6.0 in each component. For TOEFL iBT/Home Edition tests before 21 January 2026, the requirement is 90 overall and 21 in each component; tests on or after that date require 4.5 overall and 4.0 in each component. Results must be within 24 months of the start. A degree taught entirely in English may support an exemption, generally when completed within two years of the PhD start; continued residence in a majority English-speaking country may qualify for an exception. Admissions should confirm any exemption. Separately, this project requires non-UK applicants who are not currently studying in the UK to meet the English requirement before the application deadline; no exceptions will be considered.

Apply online for the Chemical Engineering PhD. The programme permits applications to a maximum of two projects. Select “University of Bath URSA” under “Funding Your Studies”; under “Your PhD project”, enter the advertised title, “Bath Engineering & Design Studentships: Upcycling Waste Plastics into Redox-Active Electrodes for Electrochemical CO₂ Capture”, and the intended supervisor’s name, Bernardo Castro Dominguez. If applying to a second project, enter its title and supervisor in the designated fields. Prepare a CV, degree certificates and transcripts, a personal statement and two references. If any degree certificate or transcript is not in English, provide an authorised English translation as required. At least one reference should be academic and from the most recent institution; an intended PhD supervisor cannot act as a referee. The course’s 1,000-word proposal applies to own-idea applications; the project description does not state that this project requires a separate proposal.

Bath encourages applications from under-represented groups. If circumstances affected your educational attainment and you want the university to know, you may explain them in your application; the university recommends a short paragraph at the end of your personal statement. If you disclose a disability in your application, the Disability Service will contact you during the process to discuss your support needs.

The project supervisor and informal-enquiry contact is Dr Bernardo Castro Dominguez (B.Castro.Dominguez@bath.ac.uk). Informal enquiries do not replace the formal online application.

Timing and funding

The project listing gives a deadline of 29 November 2026, with no time or time zone. The Engineering & Design URSA competition deadline is 23:59 GMT on that date. The expected start is 4 October 2027; another date requires agreement from the intended supervisor and Doctoral College. Current application availability has not been confirmed.

Engineering & Design URSA is competitive and open to Home and Overseas applicants. The number of Overseas awards is capped under UKRI policy, but no percentage is stated. Current general faculty policy sets a funding ceiling of three and a half years; the duration of an individual award is not given. Funding covers applicable tuition fees and includes £1,000 per year for training and a maintenance stipend. The stated £21,805 is the 2026/27 reference rate; the personal 2027/28 amount is unconfirmed. International students must pay Student visa and Immigration Health Surcharge costs themselves. Training funds are not additional living income. How the award period fits a normally four-year PhD needs confirmation.

Research and application brief

Report generated: . This date does not confirm that recruitment remains open.

Information updated: . Recheck the original notice before applying.

Show report contents

PhD Project at the University of Bath: Upcycling Waste Plastics into Redox-Active Electrodes for Electrochemical CO₂ Capture

Quick decision

Promising with material uncertainties. This Chemical Engineering PhD at Bath asks whether post-consumer PET can become a useful redox-active electrode for electrically switched CO₂ capture. The attraction is a connected materials-to-device-to-sustainability question, rather than recycling being assumed environmentally beneficial. The main research uncertainty is whether the waste-derived support, accessible redox sites and realistic-gas performance can work together for long enough to justify their production burden. Bernardo Castro Dominguez’s documented strengths in sustainable process engineering and quantitative materials research support the context; the three advertised capture references are external work, not his own results. Supervisor, external carbon/electrode studies.

The project listing gives a deadline of 29 November 2026 without a time or time zone; the Engineering URSA competition guidance gives 23:59 GMT on that date. The expected start is 4 October 2027; an alternative requires agreement from the intended supervisor and Doctoral College. The saved material does not confirm current application availability. Its competitive URSA route explicitly includes Overseas tuition. The individual 2027/28 stipend, award length and support beyond the funded term remain unconfirmed. Current funding.

Research question and doctoral work

The initial feedstock is post-consumer PET as a controlled model, not every mixed plastic stream. The advertised work investigates how the waste’s chemistry and processing history affect porosity, surface functionality and conductivity; whether reversible CO₂-binding redox groups can remain accessible; and how electron/ion transport relates to capacity, selectivity, rate and cycling stability. Selected materials would enter a laboratory electrochemical capture device, with progressively more realistic gases including simulated flue gas.

Electrical switching could avoid repeatedly heating a sorbent for regeneration. It does not remove the energy and chemical burdens of making the carbon, functionalising it or replacing degraded material. The planned energy and life-cycle comparisons with conventional sorbents and virgin-carbon alternatives are therefore part of the central test. A negative-carbon outcome, commercially competitive capture cost and industrial durability have not been demonstrated for this project.

An important analytical distinction is between total equilibrium adsorption and reversible working capacity during an electrochemical cycle. A high surface area or high quinone loading need not produce high usable capture. Humidity, oxygen, impurities, electrical losses and material lifetime are useful validation questions for the proposed increasingly realistic gas testing; their acceptable limits have not been announced. Capturing a gas also does not, by itself, establish permanent storage or avoided emissions. External PET adsorption, quinone-carbon comparison, COF capture.

School, discipline and training

Bath is the registering and degree-awarding university in the United Kingdom. The route is the full-time Chemical Engineering PhD, RECE-AFM02, in the Faculty of Engineering & Design. Most students complete in four years, with a two-year minimum and normal four-year maximum. Probationary registration is followed by written/oral confirmation, supervised research, thesis and viva. This is a doctoral studentship, without an advertised employee contract or joint degree. Programme.

Bath ranks 125th overall in QS2027. Its combined REF 2021 Engineering submission, including Chemical Engineering and other departments, had 96% rated 4-star/3-star. These are institutional/combined-engineering signals, not an electrochemical-capture ranking. The course offers research training and doctoral workshops; MyDoctoralDevelopment adds communication and transferable-skills activities. The personal experimental-training plan is still to be agreed. QS, REF, development.

Supervisor and recent research

Dr Bernardo Castro Dominguez was listed in October 2026 as a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, associated with The Foundry, the Institute of Sustainability and Climate Change and IAAPS. His official profile available then says he leads the Smart Process Engineering Lab, accepts doctoral students and combines experimental work with modelling across sustainable technologies, including plastic/e-waste recycling. The advertised email matches B.Castro.Dominguez@bath.ac.uk. Other listed grants and previous projects do not establish this student’s funding or access rights. No additional electrochemistry co-supervisor or supervision frequency has been confirmed. Current profile.

Three distinct recent Castro-coauthored originals give a more accurate picture of team capability:

  • Jafari et al., Journal of Membrane Science, 2026, FTIR-to-gas-permeability prediction. The complete original abstract describes 843 spectra from 128 polymers, polymer-grouped five-fold validation and a model applicability domain. It demonstrates quantitative structure/property screening, not PET-electrode CO₂ uptake or causality. It was online on 19 September 2026; the December 2026 issue is the same published work. The public dataset instead describes 860 spectra and 204 entries; those populations have not been reconciled. Reading covered complete publisher/institutional abstracts and the archive description, not full results or a raw-data audit. Paper, archive.

  • Jafari et al., Journal of Membrane Science, 2025, forward-osmosis prediction. The original institutional abstract describes ANN/gradient-boosting prediction of water flux and micropollutant rejection. The associated public record describes 642 experiments across 17 membranes and 102 micropollutants with linked scripts. This supports a data-analysis environment; model splits, accuracy and transfer to unfamiliar materials were not independently audited. The complete abstract and data statement were read, rather than full Methods/Results. Paper, data/code record.

  • Reed et al., Chemical Engineering Journal, 2024, polystyrene process assessment. This combines process simulation, energy balances and probabilistic economics. Selected Methods, emissions Discussion and Conclusion show why feedstock cost, process scale and the comparison scenario can change conclusions. It is especially relevant to asking whether upcycling delivers a net benefit. Polystyrene-to-styrene findings cannot be transferred numerically to PET capture electrodes. Reading included the complete official/publisher abstract and selected manuscript sections; not the whole paper or an operating-plant validation. Original record.

The three external references in the advertisement support different parts of the scientific hypothesis:

  • Li et al., Chemical Engineering Journal, 2024: PET-derived porous carbon showed CO₂ adsorption, with a comparative life-cycle assessment. Its reported equilibrium uptake is not electrochemical working capacity. The complete original abstract plus introduction and partial Results/Conclusion were available, without a complete methods/data audit. Original.

  • Hartley et al., Materials Today Energy, 2024: four quinone-functionalised carbons were compared using sorption, electrochemistry and solid-state NMR. The highest quinone loading did not yield the best utilisation or cycling stability. That makes accessible sites and support structure a substantive design question. Reading covered the complete original abstract, highlights and introduction, not the full results. Original.

  • Khan et al., JACS, 2025: quinone-based COFs supported reversible electrochemical capture, with different behaviour in ionic-liquid and aqueous systems. Selected Results/Discussion and Conclusions distinguish predominantly direct-redox capture in the former from combined redox/pH-swing behaviour in water. The reported aqueous 500-cycle result is bounded to that system, not proof of PET-derived or industrial-flue-gas performance. The complete abstract and substantive selected main-text passages were read; supplementary data were not audited. Original.

These are six distinct originals with differing reading depths, not six full-paper reviews or six demonstrations of the advertised device. The directly relevant electrochemical training, cell/gas-analysis facilities, consumables and lifetime-testing capacity need project-specific confirmation.

Funding and cost exposure

Engineering URSA is open to Home and international applicants. It covers relevant Home/Overseas tuition, maintenance and a training fund of up to £1,000 yearly. Its general Engineering funding ceiling is three and a half years; this is not a personal 42-month commitment. The advertisement notes an overseas-award cap without a percentage. £21,805 refers to 2026/27, not the individual 2027/28 stipend. A normally four-year doctorate and a potentially shorter award require a written plan for later fees and living costs. Training funds are not extra living income. URSA.

The Engineering 2027/28 full-time Overseas fee is £31,350, with subsequent annual increases capped at 8%. A funded fee is not an additional personal charge during the covered period; bench fees, writing-up arrangements and uncovered months still need checking. Bath’s 2025/26 illustrative budget lists £405 weekly/£21,060 annually and average university-managed rent of £230 weekly. Its total includes an off-campus-only utilities line despite a halls label, so it is not a universal rent-and-bills quote. Off-campus rent is listed at £750 monthly before bills. These dated figures suggest planning carefully, without predicting 2027 affordability. Fees, budget.

Visa and IHS are excluded from URSA. Charges stated in October 2026 are £558 for a Student visa and £776 per visa-year for student IHS, normally paid upfront with duration/part-year rules. Visa validity may extend beyond the course, and prices can change before 2027. Deposits, flights and emergencies also need personal provision. Visa, IHS.

Applicant background and application

The advertisement requires a relevant first/2:1 honours degree or international equivalent, with a master’s advantageous. Strong chemical engineering, chemistry, materials, electrochemistry or related foundations and interest in sustainable materials/capture/circular technologies matter. Prior electrochemistry, porous-carbon work, recycling, gas separation, characterisation or life-cycle analysis is preferred, not mandatory. This is experimental and analytical research; a coding-only interest would leave much of the advertised work unaddressed.

Chinese applicants have an affirmative conditional route: the course accepts international equivalents and candidates worldwide, and URSA accepts international applicants with Overseas-fee coverage. The current China overview directs doctoral candidates to individual programmes; its 62–75% taught-postgraduate band is not this doctorate’s cutoff. Obtain individual qualification/grade confirmation rather than assuming a Chinese master’s or a particular institution automatically qualifies. Programme, China guidance, funding.

Chemical Engineering English requirements are IELTS Academic 6.5 overall/6.0 each; TOEFL iBT/Home Edition 90 overall/21 each before 21 January 2026, or 4.5 overall/4.0 each on/after that date. Tests must have been taken within 24 months before course start. A solely English-taught degree may support an exemption, generally with graduation within two years; continued residence in a majority-English-speaking country may allow an exception, subject to admissions confirmation. Chinese nationality or an English-medium letter is not automatic exemption. The advertised condition is stricter than ordinary before-start timing: non-UK applicants not currently studying in the UK must meet English before the application deadline, with no exceptions. Course, English policy.

Apply online to Chemical Engineering PhD, choose University of Bath URSA, and enter the exact title and Castro Dominguez as intended supervisor. At most two projects may be selected, with the second title/supervisor in the designated fields. Prepare a CV, degree certificates and transcripts, a personal statement and two references. If any degree certificate or transcript is not in English, provide an authorised English translation as required. At least one should be academic from the most recent institution; intended supervisors cannot be referees. The course’s 1,000-word proposal requirement concerns an own-idea route, not an established extra requirement for this advertised topic. Bath allows AI for planning/proofreading but applicants must write application content themselves. Application guide.

Bath encourages applications from under-represented groups. If circumstances affected your educational attainment and you want the university to know, you may explain them in your application; the university recommends a short paragraph at the end of your personal statement. If you disclose a disability in your application, the Disability Service will contact you during the process to discuss your support needs.

Chemical Engineering is ATAS-covered and Chinese nationality is not exempt. The personal offer/CAH/CAS details, ATAS clearance, Student visa and funding outcome are separate conditions; this is not a verified categorical Chinese-applicant ban. Programme, ATAS.

Outlook and next questions

The relevant skills combine electrochemical/materials evidence, quantitative gas-separation evaluation and process sustainability. The UK’s 2023 CCUS market vision supplies policy context for capture and storage infrastructure, not a current vacancy list or endorsement of this specific technology. Electrical capture, circular feedstock use and permanent emissions abatement must remain separate claims. Government vision.

Before applying, send Castro Dominguez a CV and focused research-interest note, confirm degree equivalence and English completion, and check the URSA form fields. At interview, ask who provides electrochemistry guidance, which facilities are available, how realistic-gas/lifetime validation and system boundaries will be defined, and how experiments and analysis divide. Before accepting, request the actual award period/stipend, fourth-year fee/living support, bench/IP terms and immigration timetable. Those answers determine whether the attractive materials concept is backed by a workable doctoral plan.

Evidence and Sources

Project, supervisor and original research

School, training and field context

Funding, eligibility and practical arrangements

Sources

The listing may come from a university or recruitment platform. Check the notice and official sources in the report for current application requirements. View the recruitment source

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