CEES doctoral student Parichat Phaodee has been selected to receive the Ralph H. Potts Memorial Fellowship from the American Oil Chemists Society at the April 2020 conference in Montreal. This prestigious award is given to recognize graduate students performing pioneering research related to fatty acids and their derivatives and is sponsored by AkzoNobel, Inc.
Phaodee received her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Mahidol University, Thailand and a master’s degree in petrochemical technology at the Petroleum and Petrochemical College of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand where she met her advisor, CEES professor David Sabatini, while he was there teaching.
Phaodee started her doctoral program in environmental engineering at OU with professor Sabatini in 2015. Her research focus is on cold water detergency of semisolid triacylglycerol soils (e.g., bacon grease), a major detergency challenge when using environmentally friendly cold-water detergency. She has identified advanced microemulsion systems capable of improving detergency of these recalcitrant soils and has used the hydrophilic-lipophilic deviation (HLD) microemulsion model to design an optimal detergency system.
Phaodee is Sabatini’s fifth student to receive this esteemed award. Previous winners were Edgar Acosta (MSCHE 2000, PhD 2004); Thu Nguyen (MSCHE 2004, Ph.D. 2009); Linh Do (BSCHE 2004, MSCHE 2010); and Chodchanok Attaphong (Ph.D. 2014).
