Catholic University of Leuven

Amaia Ortiz de Lejarazu, predoctoral researcher in Membrane Technology group of IMDEA water, has recently finished three months duration research stay in the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), in Belgium.

She has collaborated with the department of Process engineering for sustainable systems (ProceSS) to gain experience in the preparation of ion exchange membranes.

Her work has been supervised by the Professor Bart Van der Bruggen and the predoctoral researcher Yan Zhao. During the stay, Amaia has prepared membranes that are able to efficiently separate monovalent and multivalent anions. These membranes could be used for nitrate (NO₃^–) removal from water, by using electrodialysis. Moreover, these membranes have enhanced antifouling properties

This research stay has been financed by FPI program promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities as part of the INREMEM (“Innovation and recycling of membranes for water treatment”) national project (Ref. CTM2015-65348-C2-1-R).  The main objective of INREMEM project is to recycle disposed reverse osmosis membranes (at laboratory scale) and to transform them into membranes that will be used in the the treatment of waters from different sources: wastewater, surface water and osmotic solutions.