Daniel Molina Montes de Oca is a staff scientist specializing in electrochemical engineering/electrochemistry and currently works in rare earth separations in molten salts and CO₂ capture and conversion. He originally joined INL in February of 2022 as Electrochemical Processing Postdoctoral Researcher, working for the Critical Materials Institute in the recycling of lithium-ion batteries (LIB) in aqueous media. He is co-recipient of an R&D100-2022 award for the development of the electrochemically-assisted leaching of LIBs (EC-Leach). He advanced this technology through the invention of a novel electrode architecture (patent pending) that allowed a reduction in leaching time up to 88%, making this technology competitive and viable for scale up. He has also worked in down-stream separations of impurities and nickel/cobalt from leachates.

Daniel obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University in January 2022, concentrating in Electrochemistry, Microfluidics, Numerical Modeling and Molten Salts. He developed a new flow injection analytical technique (FI-EQCM-ICP-OES) to study electrodeposition/separation of metals in a flow cell. He developed expertise in finite-element numerical modeling and used COMSOL Multiphysics to study the effects of cell geometry on mass transport and hydrodynamics in electrochemical cells. Moreover, he developed a new type of electrochemical separation for f-elements in molten salt. Four peer-reviewed articles resulted from his work, which was funded by DoD and NNSA.