Diversity in Engineering PhD Scholarship

Programme Description

The studentship is available for a candidate of any nationality with a background in environmental/process/chemical/energy engineering, physics, chemistry or environmental science (or equivalent) interested in water treatment and renewable energy - and an interest in the promotion of equality & diversity. The technology addresses the issue of providing safe drinking water in remote areas where water quality and quantity are highly variable and energy supply is unreliable or unavailable. The water quality issues of concern are dissolved contaminants such as fluoride, nitrate and arsenic. The goal of this PhD project is to further develop a renewable energy (RE) powered electrodialysis reversal (EDR) system - nicknamed REEDR - for autonomous treatment of drinking water that can overcome shortfalls of reverse osmosis (RO) technology in the desalination of brackish and high salinity waters.

Facilities
The University of Edinburgh as well as the School of Engineering is a successful host to a large number of PhD Candidates through their graduate school with a vast range of courses in career development for students on offer. Research facilities are located in the new William Rankine Building (Schäfer) with the environmental engineering laboratories being equipped with new and cutting edge facilities.
Heriot-Watt University - also located in the city of Edinburgh - is collaborating on this project and provides the energy and systems engineering research base for this project, already hosting a number of solar- and wind-powered filtration systems. This collaborative research represents one of the research strands being pursued by the newly formed Scottish Institute for Solar Energy Research (SISER) - see:
http://siser.eps.hw.ac.uk/research/water.html. The joint Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt team engages in a yearly research retreat that facilitates inter-group collaboration as well as personal and career development.