I am working in prof. Ari Väisänen's group as a laboratory engineer of analytical chemistry and circular economy. I am the laboratory executive in our hydrometallurgy laboratory (bench scale, mini-pilot equipment) and a technical person in other analytical chemistry and circular economy laboratories, also partaking in research and laboratory instructor duties.
My current research is mainly focused on recovery of valuable materials from industrial side streams and waste fractions using hydrometallurgy i.e. water-based metal chemistry. I utilize chemical recovery processes such as liquid-liquid extraction, solid-liquid separation, electrolysis and ion exchange in our Circular Economy Center of Expertise (CECE) hydrometallurgy laboratory (mini pilot scale of 1 kg / 10 L). My expertise and responsibilities comprise analytical instrumentation including inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), flame photometry, UV-Vis spectrophotometry, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and, in the near future, chromatographic applications (LC and GC). Previous research in my doctoral sudies was focused on structural and synthetic chemistry, mainly synthesis and characterization of new metal-organic materials. Among others, characterization methods such as single crystal and powder X-ray diffractometry, NMR spectroscopy and thermogravimetry are in my toolbox from those times, too.
