About

Lea R. Winter is an Assistant Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at Yale University. Her research focuses on electrified processes at the food, energy, water, and climate nexus, with particular interest in the sustainable and circularized conversion of CO2 into chemicals and fuels, green nitrogen fixation to fertilizers and nitrogen-based fuels, and the transformation of wastewater into useful products and fit-for-purpose water. Her work involves plasma chemistry, electrochemistry, and heterogeneous catalysis, aiming to develop innovative solutions for environmental and energy challenges. Dr. Winter holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and a B.S. from Yale University. She has received numerous awards, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award and the Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2024, among others. Her contributions to the field are recognized through her publications and her role in advancing plasma-activated reactions and electrified membrane technologies for water treatment, nitrogen fixation, and CO2 utilization.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Chemistry
• Engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Waste management
• Environmental chemistry
• Organic chemistry
• Process engineering
• Microeconomics
• Chemical engineering
• Economics
• Biochemical engineering
• Natural resource economics
• Chromatography
• Environmental economics

Selected publications

• Hydrofluorocarbon Greenhouse Gas Mineralization via Oxidative Low-Temperature Plasma

  ACS Energy Letters · 2025-12-24 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are potent greenhouse gases with 100-year global warming potential up to 12,400 times that of CO2. Due to their recalcitrant C–F bonds, waste HFC refrigerants are typically remediated in intensive high-temperature facilities. Herein, we investigated two low-temperature, atmospheric-pressure plasma processes for remediating three common HFCs: CH2F2 (HFC-32), CHF3 (HFC-23), and CH2FCF3 (HFC-134a). First, we studied HFC degradation in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor with a downstream alkaline trap. Addition of oxidants including CO2, O2, and, to a lesser extent, water vapor enhanced mineralization to fluoride. Therefore, we employed a low-temperature arc utilizing the alkaline absorbent as the ground electrode to produce reactive oxygen species. Compared to DBD, the arc significantly increased single-pass HFC degradation to 71.4% for CH2FCF3, 88.7% for CHF3, and 91.3% for CH2F2, with 80.0–99.9% conversion to fluoride. Therefore, the plasma-water arc could enable modular and decentralized HFC remediation. The insights into radical chemistry at the plasma-water interface offer broader mechanistic understanding for degradation of recalcitrant halogenated organic contaminants.

  PublisherDOI

• Intensified atomic utilization efficiency of single-atom catalysts for nitrate conversion via electrified nanoporous membrane

  Science Advances · 2025-07-09 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access

  Conventional electrochemical reactors for nitrate reduction typically suffer from limited reaction efficiency when applied for real-world water treatment due to poor utilization of electrocatalytic active sites. Here, we applied nanoporous electrofiltration to intensify atomic utilization by incorporating single-atom catalysts into an electrified membrane for reducing low-concentration nitrate to ammonia under realistic water conditions. We enhance the exposure of single atoms in nanopores by coating the catalysts on a carbon nanotube-interwoven membrane framework. Electrofiltration intensifies the transport and adsorption of nitrate in confined nanopores with highly exposed single-atom active sites to enhance reduction. The membrane enables a superior ammonia turnover frequency of 15.1 grams of nitrogen per gram of metal per hour, up to four orders of magnitude higher than that reported in the literature, under both high removal efficiency and Faradaic efficiency of over 86% when treating influents with a low nitrate concentration of 100 milligrams of nitrogen per liter in a residence time on the order of seconds.

  PublisherDOI

• Tuning nitrate reduction reaction selectivity via selective adsorption in electrified membranes

  Nature Chemical Engineering · 2025-06-20 · 31 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Electrofiltration-Enabled Nitrate Reduction Reactivity of Carbon Nanotube Electrified Membrane for Drinking Water Treatment

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09

  articleSenior author

  Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction could enable nitrate removal in drinking water without generating concentrated waste streams. However, current processes heavily rely upon metal catalysts with high activity to achieve sufficient nitrate removal, which increases treatment costs and can inevitably lead to leaching of metals into treated water. In this study, we elucidate how electrified filtration enables sufficient nitrate conversion to meet drinking water standards in metal-free defective CNTs by tunable matching of mass transport and reaction timescales. The metal-free carbon nanotube (CNT)-based electrified membrane (EM) was employed as a porous flow-through cathode to decrease the diffusion boundary layer. Computational fluid dynamics simulations revealed that the flow-through mode mitigates diffusion limitations to enhance overall reaction activity, as compared to the conventional flow-by mode at the same flow rate. Additionally, the nitrate reduction rate could be tuned by controlling the nitrate advection rate using permeate flux (0 to 60 L h -1 m -2 ). A maximum removal efficiency of 86.9% was reached when the mass transport rate matched the reaction rate across a range of applied potentials. Furthermore, defects in CNTs were identified as the catalytic active sites. We employed density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations to gain insight into CNT defect-catalyzed nitrate reduction under electrofiltration. Finally, the long-term stability, tolerance of environmental interferences, and sufficient nitrate removal and N 2 selectivity to meet drinking water standards were demonstrated in synthetic surface water, suggesting that the CNT-EM and flow-through reactor may provide a promising solution for decentralized nitrate destruction in drinking water.

  PublisherDOI

• Viewpoint Catalyzing Climate Solutions through Energy and Carbon Education

  Environmental Science & Technology · 2024-11-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Highly efficient metal-free nitrate reduction enabled by electrified membrane filtration

  Nature Water · 2024-07-04 · 72 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Correction to “Mining Nontraditional Water Sources for a Distributed Hydrogen Economy”

  Environmental Science & Technology · 2024-01-03

  erratumOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ARTICLES ASAPPREVAddition/CorrectionNEXTORIGINAL ARTICLEThis notice is a correctionCorrection to "Mining Nontraditional Water Sources for a Distributed Hydrogen Economy"Lea R. Winter*Lea R. Winter*[email protected], +1 (203) 432-2219More by Lea R. Winterhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-788X, Nathanial J. CooperNathanial J. CooperMore by Nathanial J. Cooperhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2972-1816, Boreum LeeBoreum LeeMore by Boreum Leehttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3169-8520, Sohum K. PatelSohum K. PatelMore by Sohum K. Patelhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5228-9449, Li WangLi WangMore by Li Wanghttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5542-6696, and Menachem ElimelechMenachem ElimelechMore by Menachem Elimelechhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4186-1563Cite this: Environ. Sci. Technol. 2024, XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXXPublication Date (Web):January 3, 2024Publication History Received3 December 2023Published online3 January 2024https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c10143© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. License Summary*You are free to share (copy and redistribute) this article in any medium or format within the parameters below:Creative Commons (CC): This is a Creative Commons license.Attribution (BY): Credit must be given to the creator.Non-Commercial (NC): Only non-commercial uses of the work are permitted. No Derivatives (ND): Derivative works may be created for non-commercial purposes, but sharing is prohibited. View full license*DisclaimerThis summary highlights only some of the key features and terms of the actual license. It is not a license and has no legal value. Carefully review the actual license before using these materials. This publication is Open Access under the license indicated. Learn MoreArticle Views-Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (915 KB) Get e-Alertsclose Get e-Alerts

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Electrocatalytic Conversion of Plasma-Activated CO₂ Toward Multicarbon Products

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09

  articleSenior author

  Renewable electricity-powered CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) toward chemicals and fuels has been gaining significant attention not only for achieving net-zero carbon emissions but also for enabling long-term energy storage. In electrochemical conversion, CO 2 can be upgraded into single- or multicarbon products such as carbon monoxide, formate, and ethylene with remarkable selectivity. However, challenges still exist in terms of high overpotential, limited product range, and low production rates. Moreover, most reported CO 2 RR to multicarbon products which used Cu as catalysts have predominantly generated C 2 products like ethylene or ethanol. However these systems require further performance improvement to target C 3+ products which have higher energy density and market price. Another electrified conversion technique involves non-thermal plasma, which can activate CO 2 into radical, ionized, and vibrationally excited species at atmospheric pressure and near-ambient temperature. However, plasma processes are non-selective, which poses limitations for controlling reaction pathways and necessitates H 2 or light alkanes as co-reactants to produce hydrocarbons. We synergized plasma and electrocatalytic conversion to demonstrate a combined CO 2 RR process that overcomes the limitations of each individual method. Through the integration of a dielectric barrier discharge plasma and an electrochemical flow reactor, pre-activated CO 2 was electrochemically converted on a Cu electrode to produce multicarbon products. The combination enhanced the faradaic efficiency and reaction rate of desirable products and opened new reaction pathways by increasing the activity of CO 2 prior to adsorption. The production rates of ethanol, propanol, and acetaldehyde were significantly increased, and new products such as methanol, acetylene, and ethane that were formed only in the combined reaction were detected. The product distribution was studied according to plasma-activated states of CO 2 and the electrochemical applied potential. To elucidate the synergistic effects in the combined system, the selectivity and production rates were compared with those in the plasma-only and electrochemical-only reactions. Further control experiments using ground-state reactants were conducted, and the excited states during plasma activation were identified by optical electron spectroscopy. This work represents not only electrocatalysis of pre-activated reactants for enhanced generation of multicarbon products during electrified conversion of CO 2 , but also demonstrates synergistic convergence of plasma and electrocatalysis for converting reactants possessing strong chemical bonds.

  PublisherDOI

• Plasma-activated co-conversion of N2 and C1 gases towards value-added products

  Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry · 2024-11-16 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Plasma activation and co-conversion of N 2 and C 1 gases pose a promising opportunity to address the urgent need to decarbonize the production of fertilizers and chemical products. This review summarizes recent studies demonstrating advances in plasma-assisted co-conversion of N 2 and C 1 gases (i.e., CO 2 , CO, and CH 4 ) to value-added products including nitrogenous fertilizers, C–N bond-containing chemicals, and in situ resource utilization products such as O 2 . Additionally, we identify key opportunities for continued research to discover and develop these technologies for real-world applications based on plasma tuning, plasma-catalyst synergy, and techno-economic considerations.

  PublisherDOI

• Electrochemical Plasma-Activated CO₂ Reduction at a Plasma-Water Interface

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09

  articleSenior author

  The development of technologies and processes to decarbonize chemical and fuel production is key to reducing global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction enables a sustainable pathway to circularize carbon-based chemical products by upgrading recovered carbon dioxide using renewable energy sources. Electrochemical CO 2 reduction has successfully been employed to produce chemicals such as methanol and ethylene, but it has been hindered by dependence on elevated temperature to achieve high yields and limited ability to generate higher order carbon products. Non-thermal carbon dioxide plasma can be generated at ambient temperature and pressure and contains energetically excited oxygen and carbon species. When introduced to an electrocatalyst, these reactive species could more readily participate in reaction pathways with higher activation barriers towards forming higher order carbon species compared to electrochemical reactions involving ground-state reactants. Further, plasma discharges over water in an electrochemical cell generate plasma-activated water, introducing solvated electrons and secondary reactive oxygen species. In this work, we investigate how the use of plasma-activated carbon dioxide and a plasma-water interface impacts electrochemical product generation. We design a novel non-thermal plasma electrode to discharge carbon dioxide plasma into water in an electrochemical cell with a Cu nanoparticle electrocatalyst. Results suggest the potential for a plasma-water electrochemical system to generate value-added products that are less commonly generated in electrochemical processes at ambient pressure and temperature.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bradley Da Silva

  30 shared

• Mengxue Zhang

  25 shared

• Jingguang G. Chen

  Columbia University

  21 shared

• Guillaume Schelcher

  IMEC

  20 shared

• Cédric Guyon

  Chimie ParisTech

  20 shared

• Michaël Tatoulian

  20 shared

• Menachem Elimelech

  Yale University

  15 shared

• Xiaoxiong Wang

  Qingdao University

  6 shared

Education

• PhD, Chemical Engineering

  Columbia University

  2020

• M.Phil., Chemical Engineering

  Columbia University

  2019

• M.S., Chemical Engineering

  Columbia University

  2017

• B.S., Chemical and Environmental Engineering

  Yale University

  2015

Awards & honors

• Beckman Young Investigator Award (2024)
• Department of Energy Early Career Award (2024)
• Caltech Young Investigators Lecture Series Award (2022)
• Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Distinguished…
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (20…