To face the current and future demands for fresh water and water reuse, sustainable desalination of seawater, groundwater and wastewater is required. Wetsus focuses on research and development of innovative, sustainable and cost-effective desalination technologies that are complementary or substitutionary to state-of-the-art thermal or membrane desalination techniques.
These new technologies can be incorporated in closed-loop schemes for water treatment schemes or mineral extraction.
Key aspects the PhD projects contribute to are (i) low impact desalination, (ii) specific removal of ions that limit downstream processing or water reuse, (iii) recovery of water and/or valuable organics and inorganics from (saline) waste water, and (iv) brine treatment towards zero liquid discharge. Several new approaches based on various know-how disciplines are being studied by Wetsus. Fields like electrochemistry, crystallization, membrane separation, extraction and adsorption are combined in the research projects.