Professor Paul Webley

Professor Paul Webley works in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University and is the leader of the Adsorption Research Group.

Professor Webley is focused on the development of advanced materials with features on the scale of nanometres. These may be internal pore dimensions or surface protuberances. The nanoscale features are significant to the overall function of the materials.

The impact of Professor Webley’s research will be beneficial to the general chemical industry and in industries involved in energy related research, particularly renewable energies. “Basically, we are using these materials as ‘molecular sieves’ or as ‘molecular cages’.  If we can engineer pores in a material which are of the same dimensions as molecules, then we can separate mixtures of these molecules by using our materials as molecular sieves.” The larger molecules are excluded and the smaller molecules can penetrate the internal structure of the material.

By depositing nanoparticles of platinum into the materials, catalysts are created, allowing the group to engineer specific reactions to occur, whilst excluding others. In this way the materials can be used in molecule separation, such as in the capture of CO₂, in water desalination and protein purification, and for reactions, like the formation of polymers.

The storage of hydrogen represents a real challenge in the progress to a hydrogen economy. When applied to this problem, these materials have the potential to provide a solution by acting rather like a sponge, soaking up hydrogen molecules.

Professor Webley works in conjunction with other important research groups. Visiting Professor Dongyuan Zhao is Chairman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and holds a Chair at Fudan University in China. He and Professor Webley have explored advanced mesoporous and microporous materials synthesis and testing.  Other collaborators at Monash include Associate Professor Huanting Wang and Dr Xinyi Zhang in the Chemical Engineering Department.

For his work on hydrogen storage, Professor Webley is conducting research through the National Hydrogen Materials Alliance, a sub-group of the CSIRO’s Energy Futures Flagship. His collaborators include Associate Professor Alan Chaffee, Associate Professor Kiyonori Suzuki and Associate Professor Jian-Feng Nie.

In his broader interests Professor Webley is focused on the capture of CO₂. He believes it is essential to minimise the CO₂ emissions from power plants. “While the search for renewable alternatives is taking place, we are still many years away from substituting fossil fuel based power generators with large scale base load energy founded on renewable.” Realistically, coal-fired power plants will operate for the next 10 to 30 years. To reduce the CO₂ emissions, Professor Webley will continue to explore the process of carbon capture and storage.

Publications

Yang, Y., J. Rosalie, P. A. Webley and L. Bourgeois (2008). "Bulk synthesis of carbon nanostructures: hollow stacked-cone-helices by chemical vapor deposition." Materials Research Bulletin 43: 2368-2373.

Yang, Y., R. K. Singh and P. A. Webley (2008). "Hydrogen Adsorption in Transition Metal - Carbon Nano-Structures." Adsorption 14: 265-274.  

Zhang, J., R. K. Singh and P. A. Webley (2008). "Alkali and Alkaline earth cation exchanged chabazite zeolites for adsorption based CO2 capture." Microporous and Mesoporous Materials 111: 478-487

Deng, Y., C. Liu, T. Yu, F. Liu, F. Zhang, Y. Wan, L. Zhang, C. Wang, B. Tu, P. A. Webley, H. Wang and D. Zhao (2007). "Facile Synthesis of Hierarchically Porous Carbons from Dual Colloidal Crystal/Block Copolymer Template Approach." Chemistry of Materials 19: 3271-3277.