Samuel Mok

Resume

Samuel Mok was born in Oss, The Netherlands, in 1987. He has studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Twente since 2006, after a propedeuse course in Information Technology at the same institute. During his study he has worked for a technical helpdesk for KPN, helped middle school students with English, maths and chemistry, and also taught the course Experimental Work for first year students of Chemical Engineering for a number of years. After finishing his bachelor with an assignment for MCS, in 2012 he started the study Science Education and Communication, studying to become a Chemistry Teacher. After two internships at high schools in the Netherlands, he started his graduation assignment at MCS.

Assignment

Current research focuses on a part of the Solar-to-Fuel project, where a microfluidic device is being develop for converting solar energy directly into hydrogen. MCS is focusing on designing the system, while other groups are designing the photolytic catalytic conversion of water to hydrogen.

For this project, Samuel is looking at a method to passively remove the produced gas from the system using tapered microchannels, building on the work done by Paust et al. (2009, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics). This method uses the difference in Laplace pressures in a deformed bubble to move it around. Being passive it saves energy, and the bubble movement can also be used to pump the fluid around, an advantage which can ultimately make the chip operate completely passively.