Ph.D. student Boily group
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 | 2024-present Ph.D. student – Chemistry. Umeå University 2022-2024 M.Sc. Mineralogy & Geomaterials – Earth Sciences. University of Vienna 2019-2022 B.Sc. Earth Sciences. University of Vienna |
Recent News
- August 2025: Attended the WISE summer school in Höör and MAXIV
- July 2025: Attended the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Prague
- March 2024: Romana joins the Boily group on November 1, 2024
rresearch
Research
This project aims is to increase knowledge about how rock weathering can be used as an effective negative CO2 emission technology. These technologies could involve direct CO2 capture in moist conditions using waste rock/minerals in greenhouse-like facilities, flow-through batch reactors or even over open remote land.
Mg-bearing mine wastes have a great potential of passively capturing atmospheric CO2 at low energetic costs, yet the reactions can be poisoned by impermeable Mg-carbonate nanocoatings. Using a proxy for Mg-bearing mine wastes, this experimental (vibrational spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electron microscopy) project will resolve molecular- to meso-scale processes of Mg-carbonate nucleation and growth during direct air capture. The focus on MgO nanocubes will directly benefit from the recent progress made by our group (Luong et al., 2023) on these materials. MgO is also a highly valuable proxy for Mg-bearing ultramafic minerals of mine wastes in CO2 mineralization research.
Luong N.T., Veyret N., Boily J.-F. ‡ 2023 CO2 mineralization by MgO nanocubes in nanometric water films. ACS Mat. Interface Chem. 15, 45055-45063. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.3c10590
Luong N.T., Boily J.-F. ‡ 2023 MgO Water film-driven brucite nanosheet growth and stacking. Langmuir. 31, 11090-11098.https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01411
Luong N.T., Holmboe M., Boily J.-F. ‡ 2023 MgO nanocube hydroxylation by nanometric waterfilms. Nanoscale. 15, 10286-10294. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/nr/d2nr07140a
Projects
Funded by FORMAS project ” Direct mineralization of Atmospheric CO2 by Enhanced Weathering”, awarded to Ph.D. supervisor Jean-François Boily
Publications
Contact & Delivery Address
Romana Viktoria Szakal
Department of Chemistry
Linnaeusv. 6
Umeå University
SE-901 87 Umeå
Sweden