Postdoctoral Fellow in electro-driven membranes for ion resource recovery

at  KU Leuven

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW IN ELECTRO-DRIVEN MEMBRANES FOR ION RESOURCE RECOVERY

(ref. BAP-2024-667)
Laatst aangepast: 16/10/24
The postdoctoral fellow position is open within the Group of Smart Responsive Separation with Hybrid Processes at KU Leuven under the supervision of Prof. dr. Xing Yang. The Yang Research Group focuses on process intensification strategies for designing low-emission and energy efficient separation systems utilizing smart responsive materials with nano/micro-structured interfaces, reactive kinetics and optimal separation units. The hybridisation of separation technologies (e.g., membrane, extraction, crystallization, absorption and chromatography) is the key tool to design an Energy-Efficient Separation Systems for Sustainability (2E3S), assisted with experimental research and process system engineering via multi-scale numerical modeling
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FUNCTIE

One of the global challenges for the transition to sustainable energy is the need for certain critical raw materials. The European Union recently announced to ban fossil fuel cars by 2035, preparing the switch to electric cars. With the increasing demand, metal ions such as lithium and cobalt are crucial components of lithium-ion batteries and are essential for the production of smartphones and electric cars. Although there are enormous ion resources hidden in the ocean and to be recovered from waste batteries, how to efficiently obtain them in industry-grade purity and in a scalable manner remains a bottleneck of existing separation technologies. The IonFracMem project (European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant https://www.kuleuven.be/english/research/EU/p/he/p1/erc/IonFracMem) aims to address this challenge by developing novel membranes that combine fast throughput with accurate fractionation of target ions in high purity.
To achieve this ambitious goal we are seeking a high caliber PhD candidate to be part of this exciting research program and design novel ion exchange membranes for effectively recovering valuable ion resources from waste and natural streams, by combining experimental and modeling approaches. The position requires background in chemical engineering and electro-driven membrane separation technology such as electrodialysis, electrolysis, etc.

Please refer the Job description for details