School of Chemical Engineering

Dr Ummul Sultana

Advance QLD Industry Research Fellow
School of Chemical Engineering
Room: 345
Banksia Building: 1016
Long Pocket Campus
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Researcher biography

Dr Ummul Sultana is a Industry Research Fellow in the Hydrometallurgy Research Group within the School of Chemical Engineering, at the University of Queensland. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, followed by Master's degree in Hydrometallurgy and PhD in Materials Engineering from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. After finishing her PhD, she started her research career as a Postdoctoral Researcher at UQ in the School of Chemical Engineering in 2019. She has gained experiences in the field of hydrogen energy, nanomaterials-based electrocatalysts development, thermodynamic phase equilibria & database development as well as advanced materials' characterization techniques. She was invited to the Ohio State University in United States of America to participate in a short course on advanced materials' characterization techniques. She has been largely contributing to the research area of treating industrial tailings & critical metal recovery techniques. She has also been engaged in teaching, staff & laboratory management as well as managing the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines in UQ laboratories. Due to her research excellence, she has received the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award for the class of 2019 and High Achiever Award in 2018 from QUT. She has several publications in well reputed journals and two of her journal articles have been featured in the front covers of "Advanced Functional Materials" (IF 20) and "ChemElectroCehm" (IF 5). In 2021, she was awarded the Research Fellowship Grant from the UQ Research and Innovation Centre. Ummul is currently focusing on Extracting Queensland's Rare Earth Elements Sustainably project supported by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy. She is also an Associate Fellow of Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), member of Royal Society of Chemistry and Engineers Australia professional societies.

Teaching and Learning:

  • Metal Production and Recycling [METL2201]
  • Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy [METL6204]
  • Pyrometallurgy [MINE3212]

Publications

Book Chapter (1)
Journal Articles (14)
Conference Paper (1)

Book Chapter

Amilton Barbosa Botelho Junior, Ummul Khair Sultana and James Vaughan (2023). Hydrometallurgical processing of e-waste and metal recovery. Management of electronic waste: resource recovery, technology and regulation. (pp. 234-288) edited by Anshu Priya. Hoboken, NJ United States: Wiley.

Journal Articles

Villa Gomez, Denys, Whitworth, Anne J., Vaughan, James, Sultana, Ummul, Ledezma, Pablo and Parbhakar-Fox, Anita (2024). Review on developments in technologies for critical metal recovery from mining and processing wastes. Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 1-20. doi: 10.1080/08827508.2024.2408015
Nigri, Elbert M., Sultana, Ummul K., Santos, André L. A., Vaughan, James W. and Rocha, Sônia D. F. (2023). Nickel sulfate solution fluoride separation with hydrous zirconium oxide. Tungsten, 6 (2), 367-381. doi: 10.1007/s42864-023-00241-1
Sultana, U.K., Shevchenko, M. and Jak, E. (2021). Integrated experimental liquidus and modelling studies of the ternary AgO0.5-FeO1.5-SiO2 system in equilibrium with metallic Ag. Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 870 159333, 1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2021.159333
Sultana, Ummul K., Fernand, Joseph F.S. and O'Mullane, Anthony P. (2020). Transformation of stainless steel 316 into a bifunctional water splitting electrocatalyst tolerant to polarity switching. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 25 e00177, e00177. doi: 10.1016/j.susmat.2020.e00177
Shishin, Denis, Hidayat, Taufiq, Sultana, Ummul Khair, Shevchenko, Maksym and Jak, Evgueni (2020). Experimental measurement and thermodynamic model predictions of the distributions of Cu, As, Sb and Sn between liquid lead and PbO–FeO–Fe2O3–SiO2 slag. International Journal of Materials Research, 111 (9) 146.111942, 733-743. doi: 10.3139/146.111942
Wahab, Md.A., Joseph, Jickson, Atanda, Luqman, Sultana, Ummul K., Beltramini, Jorge N., Ostrikov, Kostya, Will, Geoffrey, O'Mullane, Anthony P. and Abdala, Ahmed (2020). Nanoconfined synthesis of nitrogen-rich metal-free mesoporous carbon nitride electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction. ACS Applied Energy Materials, 3 (2), 1439-1447. doi: 10.1021/acsaem.9b01876
Shishin, Denis, Hidayat, Taufiq, Sultana, Ummul, Shevchenko, Maksym and Jak, Evgueni (2019). Experimental Study and Thermodynamic Calculations of the Distribution of Ag, Au, Bi, and Zn Between Pb Metal and Pb–Fe–O–Si slag. Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, 6 (1), 68-77. doi: 10.1007/s40831-019-00257-3
Sultana, Ummul K. and O'Mullane, Anthony P. (2019). Electrochemically fabricated Ni−P, Ni−S and Ni−Se materials for overall water splitting: investigating the concept of bifunctional electrocatalysis. ChemElectroChem, 6 (10), 2630-2637. doi: 10.1002/celc.201801731
Sultana, Ummul K., Riches, James D. and O'Mullane, Anthony P. (2018). Gold doping in a layered Co-Ni hydroxide system via galvanic replacement for overall electrochemical water splitting. Advanced Functional Materials, 28 (43) 1804361, 1804361. doi: 10.1002/adfm.201804361
Sultana, Ummul K. and O'Mullane, Anthony P. (2018). Electrochemical formation of Amorphous molybdenum phosphosulfide for enabling the hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline and acidic media. ACS Applied Energy Materials, 1 (6), 2849-2858. doi: 10.1021/acsaem.8b00489
Sultana, Ummul K., He, Tianwei, Du, Aijun and O'Mullane, Anthony P. (2017). An amorphous dual action electrocatalyst based on oxygen doped cobalt sulfide for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions. RSC Advances, 7 (87), 54995-55004. doi: 10.1039/c7ra10394h
Sultana, U.K. (2014). Kinetics of leaching of iron oxide in clay in oxalic acid and in hydrochloric acid solutions. Materials Science and Metallurgy Engineering, 2 (1) DOI:10.12691/msme-2-1-2, 5-10. doi: 10.12691/msme-2-1-2
Sultana, U.K. (2013). Kinetics of recovery of alumina from aluminium casting waste through fusion with sodium hydroxide. American Journal of Materials Engineering and Technology, 1 (3), 30-34. doi: 10.12691/materials-1-3-1
Sultana, U. K. and Kurny, A. S. W. (2012). Dissolution kinetics of iron oxides in clay in oxalic acid solutions. International Journal of Minerals Metallurgy and Materials, 19 (12), 1083-1087. doi: 10.1007/s12613-012-0674-3

Conference Paper

Vaughan, J., Guan, Y., Loureiro Gontijo, V. L. and Sultana, U. (2024). Mary Kathleen tailings derived rare earth concentrate via double salt precipitation and caustic conversion. Southern African Rare Earths 2nd International Symposium 2024, Swakopmund, Namibia, 19-20 June 2024. Johannesburg, South Africa: Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.