Doctoral fellow - Department of Green Chemistry and Technology

Organisation/Company Ghent University Research Field Chemistry » Analytical chemistry Chemistry » Inorganic chemistry Chemistry » Other Engineering » Chemical engineering Engineering » Materials engineering Engineering » Other Environmental science » Water science Technology » Environmental technology Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 21 Oct 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Department LA24 - Department of Green Chemistry and Technology

Degree Master's degree

Occupancy rate 100%

Vacancy type Research staff

ABOUT GHENT UNIVERSITY

Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.
With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.

YOUR TASKS

For the Chair Industrial and Circular Water Technology (UGent-Evides), Particle and Interfacial Technology (PaInT) research group at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, we are looking for a motivated doctoral fellow for a research project on membrane fouling and cleaning in industrial water applications.

Membrane processes — in particular reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) — are central to industrial water production and reuse. Their performance is limited over time by scaling and fouling, and their operational lifetime is largely determined by how effectively scaling and fouling can be reversed through membrane cleaning. In practice, cleaning is often incomplete: cleaning chemistries and cleaning conditions are chosen empirically, cleaning efficiency is difficult to quantify, and the trade-offs between efficiency, membrane integrity loss, cost and discharge compliance of spent cleaning solutions are poorly resolved.

This PhD project addresses two specific gaps: the absence of a robust, quantitative measure of cleaning efficiency, and the limited mechanistic understanding of how cleaning agents interact with the different types of scaling and fouling. Through a systematic investigation of the link between feedwater chemistry, foulant composition and cleaning performance across a range of industrial cases, the project aims first to establish the mechanisms of cleaning and, based on that understanding, to formulate simple cleaning solutions with which those mechanisms can be tested.

More specifically, you will:

• Develop and apply standardised protocols for membrane evaluation (permeability, salt rejection, pressure drop, integrity) and for membrane autopsy (ATR-FTIR, SEM-EDX, ICP-OES, LC-OCD, ATP, TGA), applied consistently across a range of industrial membrane samples.
• Characterise industrial feedwaters using a tiered analytical strategy, covering both quantification and compositional fractionation of organic matter, as well as silica and iron speciation.
• Establish a curated library of commercial and bulk-chemistry cleaning agents and test these against standardised, mutually comparable fouled membrane coupons under quantitative laboratory conditions.
• Identify the most effective cleaning agents against defined criteria (permeability recovery, foulant removal, retention of membrane integrity) and validate them on lab-scale RO modules under…