Doctoral student in PFAS treatment and destruction technologies

Doctoral Student In PFAS Treatment And Destruction Technologies

PFAS pollution is a slow-moving environmental crisis. These highly persistent chemicals continuously contaminate water resources, ecosystems and food webs, while current treatment technologies often transfer PFAS between waste streams rather than eliminate them. Join us at Chalmers to develop a treatment train where PFAS are first concentrated from complex water matrices and subsequently destroyed using catalytic and photocatalytic approaches, supported by advanced analytical verification methods.

The research is conducted in close collaboration with IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Örebro University and municipal wastewater treatment plants.

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering pushes the knowledge of chemistry and chemical engineering forward in a broad field of research and education. We offer an international environment, with scientific areas ranging from fundamental chemistry, health and medical technology, materials science, renewable energy, to chemical engineering processing, material recycling, nuclear chemistry, theory and modelling.

The Ergang Wang group focuses on the synthesis of organic semiconductors for organic electronics and the development of photocatalysts for sustainable chemistry applications (e.g., hydrogen generation and polymer degradation). The group is international and currently consists of 1 Professor, 1 permanent researcher, 6 postdocs and 2 PhD students.

The doctoral position is part of the Formas-funded COAST PFAS, led by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and conducted in collaboration with Chalmers, Örebro University and municipal wastewater treatment plants to develop practical and scalable solutions for reducing PFAS emissions to coastal waters by combining upstream source control, advanced analytical methods, treatment technologies and governance innovation. Within COAST PFAS, this PhD project focuses on developing and evaluating treatment trains that combine PFAS pre-concentration, catalytic and photocatalytic destruction and advanced analytical verification to achieve robust PFAS elimination in complex water matrices.

Instead of only capturing PFAS and creating waste streams, the project targets upstream "treat-the-fraction" solutions: concentrating PFAS into manageable side streams followed by catalytic and photocatalytic destruction, supported by robust verification (defluorination/organofluorine metrics) to avoid hidden byproducts.

The project is conducted in close collaboration with IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and Örebro University. Experimental work will involve visits to IVL's Sjöstadsverket Water Innovation Centre (SWIC) in Stockholm and collaboration with researchers at Örebro University.

The following requirements are mandatory:

• To qualify as a Doctoral student, you must have a Master's degree (masterexamen) of 120 credits or a Master's degree (magisterexamen) of 60 credits in material science, chemistry, chemical engineering, environmental engineering or equivalent.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English
• Experience in at least one of the following areas:
• catalysis / heterogeneous catalysis / electrochemistry
• photocatalysis / photochemistry / photoredox processes
• environmental chemistry / water treatment processes
• analytical chemistry relevant to environmental samples (e.g., chromatography, spectroscopy, ion analysis)

* for students with an education earned outside of Sweden, a 4-year Bachelor's degree is accepted.

The following experience will strengthen your application:

• Experience working with PFAS or other persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
• Experience with water and wastewater treatment processes, including membrane filtration, flotation, foam fractionation, adsorption, or pilot-scale treatment systems
• Experience with advanced oxidation/reduction processes (AOP/ARP), radical chemistry, or reaction kinetics
• Experience with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS and/or HRMS), organofluorine-related methods (EOF/TOF), and/or fluoride analysis
• Experience with reactor…