CEE Graduate Named a Forbes ’30 Under 30′ in Energy
Megan O'Connor PhD '17 is the cofounder of Nth Cycle, a company that helps recycle rare earth metals from used electronics
Megan O’Connor, CEE ’17, has been named a Forbes “30 Under 30” in Energy for 2019. O’Connor started a company called Nth Cycle that uses carbon nanotube filters to separate different elements found in e-waste and electronics manufacturing streams.
Forbes‘s Chris Helman writes, “O’Connor has devised a novel, more environmentally friendly method of recycling valuable metals using carbon nanotube filters the size of a water bottle to extract materials like cobalt and lithium from an acid bath of dissolved discarded electronics. O’Connor, 28, believes nanotube filters will make it cheaper for electronics makers to buy recycled metals than newly mined supplies, and with one tenth the energy input.”