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Postdoctoral Researcher for R2EM, PSEP & ePlastcom

Deadline: 4th April 2025, but the position will remain open until a suitable candidate is found 

Process industries are energy and material intensive facing the problem of reaching decarbonization scenarios, where in-situ chemical production and the integration of renewable energies are potential solutions. Industries located in coastal areas of arid and semiarid regions, such as Europe and Australia, are suffering from access to fresh water due to the strong water scarcity scenarios. Under this scenario, the sea is presented as a blue economy solution as it could provide access to fresh water to produce green hydrogen by using advanced membrane-based technology processes. Production of H₂(g) should be linked to the integration of renewable energies, accordingly. At the same time, a sustainable and circular processing approach could be integrated to recover valuable chemicals, as sodium chloride for the production of chlorine, sodium sulphate for the soda ash industry, sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, as well as other critical elements such as magnesium and boron. The research work of the post-doc will evaluate the techno-economic feasibility of developing a circular processing approach based on the integration of pressure (RO, HPRO, UHPRO, OARO, LSRRO, NF and HPNF) and electrochemical (ED, EDBP) driven membranes technologies, ion-exchange, reactive precipitation and crystallization to demonstrate the on-site production of chemicals (e.g. H₂(g), NaCl(s), Na₂SO₄·10H₂O(s)).

To develop the processes requested to demonstrate the circular approaches defined, the integration of pressure and electrochemistry driven membranes technologies will be necessary. When reviewing the state of the art polyamide chemistry for the production of dense membranes, using both fully aromatic and semi-aromatic polyamides is still the main chemistry used by most of the RO membrane providers. However, the growth of NF and LSRRO in the brine concentration processes is facing the problem of having membranes with high rejection values for divalent metal ions while maximizing the permeation of monovalent species such as Na⁺ and Cl⁻. At the same time, the presence of bromide ions in water and sea water RO brines is the main issue when maximizing the quality of the sodium chloride for industrial applications as it is the case of the chloralkaline industry. Similar problems are faced when the treatment schemes are based on the use of ion-exchange membranes where the improvement of the ion transport for monovalent ions from divalent ions as well as to improve the chloride/bromide selectivity factor will be relevant scenario or when applied to the production of H₂(g) from high salinity water sources. Accordingly, new families of dense and ion exchange membranes will be required.

1. Evaluation of new membrane chemistries for dense polymeric membranes (NF, RO) and ion-exchange membranes (ED, EDBP)
2. Characterization of the membrane permeances and the transport numbers as a function of the membrane ageing using laboratory set-ups with planar and spiral configurations could provide modelling parameters to be introducing in the process design numerical tools.
3. Modification of the polyamide chemistry introducing modifiers a new-functional group maximizing the water flux will maximizing the selectivity factors of monovalent ions (Na/K/Li and Cl/Br).
4. Modification of the ion-exchange membranes chemistry introducing modifiers: a new-functional group maximizing the water flux will maximize the selectivity factors (e.g. separation of Na/K/Li and Cl/Br).
5. Understanding and predicting the membrane life time as a function of the operation conditions including the impact of the cleaning chemicals or the fouling events.
6. Evaluation of potential reusability of RO membranes at the end of their life as NF or LSRRO membranes.
7. Evaluation of mechanisms affecting the membrane operation to be introduced in the process design tools is needed when implementing these new brines recovery schemes.