Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses primarily on the behavior of contaminants in the environment, with particular interest in the contamination of the subsurface environment by synthetic organic contaminants. Sources of funding to support this research include the Texas Hazardous Waste Research Center, the City of Dunedin ( Florida), and the Tampa Electric Company (TECO).

Professor Cunningham will advise an undergraduate student in the continuing development of a new technology to clean up contaminated soil with applications to sites in Tampa. In particular, the student will investigate whether a combination of palladium (Pd) and rhodium (Rh) catalysts are able to dehalogenate and hydrogenate chlorinated aromatic chemicals extracted from contaminated soil. Target contaminants will include tetrachlorobenzene and pentachlorophenol. Previous results from Professor Cunningham’s laboratory demonstrated that the combined extraction/catalysis technology could successfully remove these contaminants from soil and could dechlorinate them; additional research is required to achieve hydrogenation of the resultant aromatic hydrocarbons.

The student working on this project will:

• modify a laboratory apparatus developed by one of Dr Cunningham’s former doctoral students to include a catalytic reactor with rhodium catalyst.
• analyze chemical samples by gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionization detection (FID) and electron capture detection (ECD) to demonstrate the success of the technology. .

More information: Dr. Cunningham's website