Libyan water professionals completed training

The Libyan staff of the project “Man-made river” successfully completed the two-weeks tailor made training (TMT) at IHE Delft on Water Management and desalination. The TMT was funded by NUFFIC and lead by Dr. Maria Kennedy and coordinated by Nirajan Dhakal. The training covered topics such as water management, desalination, water quality monitoring, irrigation, water demand management.

Progress in assessing biological activity in drinking water

Our PhD research fellow Rinnert Schurer presenting his findings about methods (assimilable organic carbon, biomass production potential (BPP), biological regrowth potential (BRP), flow cytometry vs. adenosine triphosphate) for assessing biological activity in drinking water in NL. Publication coming soon…

Best paper oral presentation award at InDACON 2018

Nirajan Dhakal, Lecturer in Water Supply Engineering at IHE Delft, was awarded the best paper oral presentation award for the paper entitled “Global water scarcity and desalination: Challenges and opportunities” at the International Conference on Desalination (InDACON-2018)- clean India technologies, role of desalination and swachh bharat mission. The conference was held in National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu, India from 20-21 April 2018.

Nirajan Dhakal awarded Doctoral Degree

On 30 November 2017, Mr. Nirajan Dhakal successfully presented and defended his PhD thesis and was awarded with a Doctoral degree. Professor Maria Kennedy was his promotor and Dr. Sergio Salinas Rodriguez his copromotor.

The PhD research focused on:

The increasing global demand for potable water and the economy of scale in desalinating water will increase large-scale Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) plants in future. However, organic/biological fouling in SWRO membranes caused due to seasonal proliferation of algae and algal released organic matter (AOM) is an issue for cost effective operation of SWRO plants. In order to maintain the stable operation of SWRO plants, reliable pre-treatment systems which substantially reduces AOM and nutrients, such as carbon and phosphate from SWRO feed water, are needed. Hence, this research (i) developed a bacterial regrowth potential (BRP) method to assess the biofouling potential of SWRO feed water; and (ii) investigated the nutrients removal and the delay in biofouling when tight ultrafiltration (10 kDa) and bio-based phosphate adsorbent are used as pre-treatment systems. BRP method was developed using a natural consortium of marine bacteria as inoculum and flow cytometry. Experimental studies revealed that tight UF reduced AOM, bio-based phosphate adsorbent reduced phosphate, which lead to the lower biofouling potential of SWRO feed water. Simulation of biofouling in SWRO using membrane-fouling simulator (MFS) shows that the pre-treated feed water using the aforementioned pre-treatment systems will lead to less biofouling due to lower rate of head loss development. It is expected that the BRP method developed through this research and the tested pretreatment systems will result in better operation and maintenance of SWRO plants during algal blooms.

Access to dissertation here.

Innovation global award

Award for the best oral and written paper presented as part of the Technical Program at IDA 2017 Desalination and Water Reuse World Congress (Sao Paulo, Brazil). Innovation, for the best paper that presents an innovative desalination or water reuse technology that has reached the commercial stage but is not yet considered to be widely adopted. For “A New Method of Assessing Bacterial Growth in SWRO Systems: Method Development and Applications”.

See also:

https://www.wateronline.com/doc/international-desalination-award-winners-technical-program-ida-world-congress-0001   [accessed 05.11.2017].

https://www.desalination.biz/news/0/IDA-World-Congress-2017-award-winners-in-full/8882/   [Accessed 05.11.17]