Angelo Rossi, a 2021 final year student from the Department of Chemical Engineering - was selected by the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology to be the University of Pretoria’s nominee for the annual Matthews/IPGIP (Integrated Post Graduate Industry Partnership) prize (www.ipgip.co.za).  Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the judging and prize-giving ceremony could not take place in December 2021.  Instead, each of the finalists received an R15 000 share of the total prize money. 

Angelo’s project investigated the potential performance enhancement of carbon fibre electrochemical capacitor electrodes via heat and chemical activation methods.  The effect of layered double hydroxide (LDH) deposition on performance was specifically investigated.  A novel and facile LDH ethanol suspension dropwise deposition technique was explored and compared to in-situ deposition.  In 2022, Angelo plans to confirm his experimental findings before publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.  He is also exploring further opportunities in the field of energy storage devices and would like to perform industrial/commercial research in this field once he completed his postgraduate studies.

Congratulations to Angelo and his supervisors: Prof Johan Labuschagne and David Viljoen!