PhD: Biofiltration for removal of micropollutants from concentrated streams

Are you interested in working on circular water systems? Do you want to better understand nature-based technologies for the removal of micropollutants and PFAS from concentrated streams? Join our research consortium!

The Department of Environmental Technology of Wageningen University & Research is looking for a PhD candidate within the research consortium BlueVantage. BlueVantage is a large research program with scientific and societal partners that aims to tackle growing water challenges by finding new ways to reuse water safely and sustainably. To that end, BlueVantage explores new treatment technologies to remove persistent organic micropollutants and recover valuable resources from water, thereby ensuring a clean water cycle for economy, ecology and society. The research in BlueVantage is divided over different thematic work packages in which a number of PhDs, their supervisors and societal partners together work on the ambitions of BlueVantage.

This PhD-position will be performed in a work package focussed on removing organic micropollutants and PFAS in the context of drinking water production. The work in this work package will be performed in collaboration with 2 other PhD-candidates, drinking water companies and technology developers. You will study the use of biofiltration systems for the removal of organic micropollutants and PFAS from concentrated streams, which are produced by novel membranes developed by a colleague PhD-candidate. Specifically, your duties and responsibilities include

• obtain fundamental insights in the roles of biodegradation and sorption of organic micropollutants and PFAS in biofiltration systems treating concentrated streams using laboratory experiments;
• analyze the composition of concentrated streams using LC-MS/MS and HRMS to identify organic micropollutants, PFAS, and their transformation products and advanced methods to characterize dissolved organic carbon composition;
• develop a predictive model to describe sorption and biodegradation of organic micropollutants and PFAS in biofiltration systems;
• take part in BlueVantage activities, such as consortium meetings, workshops, stakeholder interaction and courses;
• pro-actively communicate your research findings with partners within and outside of the BlueVantage consortium;
• publish your research in peer-reviewed journals and present your research at (inter)national conferences.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the Department of Environmental Technology (www.ete.wur.nl), where you will be member of the ‘Micropollutants & Pathogens team, which is led by Dr. Nora Sutton. You will be co-supervised by Dr. Jouke Dykstra, Dr. Thomas Wagner and Dr. Nora Sutton.

PhD position: BlueVantage: Anaerobic Treatment of Municipal Wastewaters

Are you interested in working on circular water systems? Do you enjoy working together with other scientists and societal stakeholders on fundamental research questions? Do you want to make municipal wastewater treatment more energy efficient and enable resource recovery?

The Department of Environmental Technology of Wageningen University & Research is looking for a PhD candidate within the research consortium BlueVantage. BlueVantage is a large research program with scientific and societal partners that aims to tackle growing water challenges by finding new ways to reuse water safely and sustainably. To that end, BlueVantage explores new treatment technologies to remove persistent organic micropollutants and recover valuable resources from water, thereby ensuring a clean water cycle for economy, ecology and society. The research in BlueVantage is divided over different thematic work packages in which a number of PhDs, their supervisors and societal partners together work on the ambitions of BlueVantage.

This PhD-position will be performed in a work package focussed on developing a next generation of municipal wastewater treatment technologies. The research will be performed in collaboration with 3 other PhD-candidates, in close cooperation with the “Treatment plant of the future” initiative of the Waterboards and STOWA, several consulting firms and technology developers. You will develop novel approaches for anaerobic treatment of low concentrated wastewater using innovative concentration technologies and reactor designs to ultimately reach low effluent concentrations and energy-efficient and circular water treatment strategies.

Specifically, your duties and responsibilities include:

• study fractionation of organic components of wastewater with novel technologies and assess the biodegradability of the different fractions;
• assess the optimal conditions for degradation of organic contaminants to different end products (i.e. building blocks for bio-based industry or energy carriers like methane);
• develop low-temperature microbial consortia capable of effectively removing dissolved organic contaminants;
• assess feasibility of the selected processes with respect to energy and product recovery;
• take part in BlueVantage activities, such as consortium meetings, workshops, stakeholder interaction and courses;
• pro-actively communicate your research findings with partners within and outside of the BlueVantage consortium;
• publish your research in peer-reviewed journals and present your research at (inter)national conferences.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the Department of Environmental Technology, where you will be a member of the ‘Biorecovery/Water Group’ team. You will be co-supervised by Prof. Adriaan Mels, Dr. Dainis Sudmalis and Dr Miriam van Eekert.

PhD: Evaluating water reuse in agriculture under future effluent requirements

Are you interested in working on circular water systems? Do you enjoy working together with other scientists and societal stakeholders on fundamental research questions? Do you want to better understand if treated wastewater can safely be used for future crop irrigation?

The Department of Environmental Technology and Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR), part of Wageningen University & Research are looking for a PhD candidate within the research consortium BlueVantage. BlueVantage is a large research program with scientific and societal partners that aims to tackle growing water challenges by finding new ways to reuse water safely and sustainably. To that end, BlueVantage explores new treatment technologies to remove persistent organic micropollutants (OMPS) and recover valuable resources from water, thereby ensuring a clean water cycle . The research in BlueVantage is divided over different thematic work packages in which a number of PhDs, their supervisors and societal partners together work on the ambitions of BlueVantage.

This PhD-position will be performed in a work package focussed on tools for designing and assessing circular water systems. The work in this work package will be performed in collaboration with another PhD-candidate and post-doc. You will study the safety of crop production in relation to the use of treated wastewater for irrigation. Your focus will be on organic micropollutants (OMPs) and PFAS, and if their presence in treated wastewater limits safe reuse of that water for irrigation, especially in terms of environmental and crop safety. Currently there are no clear guidelines for the presence of OMPs and PFAS in irrigation water. You will perform crucial research to help develop these guidelines while also exploring the mechanisms by which OMPs and PFAS are taken up in plants.

Specifically, your duties and responsibilities include:

• build a model for transfer of OMPs and PFAS from treated wastewaters to crops. To that end you will collect and optimise available models and prioritise the different contaminants;
• perform experiments to validate the developed model. This will include performing plant-pot experiments and the determination of OMPs and transformation products using state-of-the-art analytical methodologies;
• identify mechanisms by which OMPs and PFAS are taken up in plants and relate these to the physical-chemical properties of these contaminants;
• take part in BlueVantage activities, such as consortium meetings, workshops, stakeholder interaction and courses;
• pro-actively communicate your research findings with partners within and outside of the BlueVantage consortium;
• publish your research in peer-reviewed journals and present your research at (inter)national conferences.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the Department of Environmental Technology, where you will be member of the “Micropollutants & Pathogens” team, which is led by Dr. Nora Sutton. You will be supervised by Dr. Milou van de Schans, Dr. Stefan van Leeuwen and Dr. Nora Sutton. Chemical analysis will be conducted in close collaboration with WFSR.

PhD: Ammonium removal in municipal wastewater treatment with ion exchange

Are you interested in working on circular water systems? Do you want to better understand ion exchange as a technology for ammonium removal in the next generation of municipal wastewater treatment technologies? Join our research consortium!

The Department of Environmental Technology of Wageningen University & Research is looking for a PhD candidate within the research consortium BlueVantage. BlueVantage is a large research program with scientific and societal partners that aims to tackle growing water challenges by finding new ways to reuse water safely and sustainably. To that end, BlueVantage explores new treatment technologies to recover valuable resources from water and to remove persistent organic micropollutants, thereby ensuring a clean water cycle for economy, ecology and society.

The research in BlueVantage is divided over different thematic work packages in which a number of PhDs, their supervisors and societal partners together work on the ambitions of BlueVantage. This PhD-position will be positioned in a work package focussed on the next generation of municipal wastewater treatment technologies. The work in this work package will be performed in collaboration with 2 other PhD-candidates, water authorities and technology developers.

You will study the use of ion-exchange for ammonium removal from wastewater streams. You will identify strategies for reduction of chemical use in ion exchange by developing mechanistic models and by conducting laboratory experiments.

Specifically, your duties and responsibilities include

• obtain fundamental insights in ion exchange as a technology for ammonium removal and recovery from wastewater, applied in the next generation of wastewater treatment;
• conduct experiments to determine relevant parameters for ammonium removal in a complex matrix and for subsequent regeneration;
• develop a predictive model to describe competitive removal of ammonium and other ions by ion exchange in Julia, Python or Matlab;
• take part in BlueVantage activities, such as consortium meetings, workshops, stakeholder interaction and courses;
• pro-actively communicate your research findings with partners within and outside of the BlueVantage consortium;
• publish your research in peer-reviewed journals and present your research at (inter)national conferences.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the Department of Environmental Technology (www.ete.wur.nl). You will be co-supervised by Dr. Paula van den Brink and by Dr. Jouke Dykstra.

PhD: AI-based prediction of protease cleavage and kinetics in protein digestion

Do you want to want to understand protein digestion better? Are you interested in unravelling the specificity of proteases and designing peptide release kinetics using innovative modelling approaches? Do you have strong backgrounds in food/analytical chemistry as well as in data science and modelling? This PhD position might be for you!

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate to investigate the prediction of protease cleavage sites in food proteins and the resulting peptide release kinetics during protein digestion.

Protein hydrolysis plays a key role in determining nutritional properties of foods. Yet, it is still largely treated as a black box in nutritional science, since protein digestion and peptide release are difficult to predict, which may hamper utilization of dietary proteins to the full extent. This project aims to understand protein digestion by combining advanced analytical chemistry, including peptide identification and quantification with LC-MS, with data-driven modelling to predict peptide formation and release kinetics during digestion, enabling a better understanding of food digestion as well as rational design of specialized protein hydrolysates for infants, elderly and athletes.

As a PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research, you will predict the actions of the digestive proteases and peptide release during digestion of proteins by AI modelling. A comprehensive experimental dataset will be collected, and kinetic parameters will be determined from the peptide concentrations at different timepoints using untargeted quantitative UHPLC-PDA-ESI-MS. Special attention will be paid to the interplay of different digestive proteases and structural changes in dietary protein that will influence enzyme actions. This will serve as a basis for the modelling approach utilising the amino acid sequences of the substrate and the physico-chemical properties of the constituent amino acids. By determining the amino acids around cleavage sites, we aim to unravel patterns in amino acid sequences that can ground a predictive model for protein hydrolysis. Based on these insights, a predictive tool will be developed for peptides and their concentrations during digestion, starting from only the amino acid sequence of the dietary protein.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• taking ownership of the PhD project and performing the proposed research, including developing and executing analysis on state-of-the-art LC-MS equipment;
• developing kinetic models to describe peptide release kinetics;
• publishing your results in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presenting them at (inter)national scientific conferences and/or symposia;
• supervising BSc and MSc students during their thesis and helping with education;
• fulfilling the requirements of the PhD program including completing a training and supervision plan to further develop your personal skills as a researcher.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the laboratory of Food Chemistry https://www.wur.nl/en/research-results/chair-groups/agrotechnology-and-food-sciences/food-sciences-technology/laboratory-of-food-chemistry.htmand laboratory of Food Process Engineering , where you will be part of a dynamic and international groups of scientists. You will be part of the protein team in Food Chemistry, led by dr. Gijs Vreeke and part of the digitalization and automation in food science team led by dr. Yizhou Ma of Food Process Engineering.