Chemical Engineering in Aqueous Systems

Our research areas:

1. Separation Science

2. Water Purification

3. Realtime Process Monitoring

Water has an important role in many unit operations in applications of the chemical industry, hydrometallurgy, wood processing, food production, the metal industry and biorefining. For instance, different types of unit operations of water systems include precipitation, crystallization, freezing, eutectic freeze crystallization, drying, evaporation, absorption and adsorption, dissolution, heat transfer and post-processing of liquids and solids.

For a deeper understanding and modelling of production processes, it is also important to know the states of equilibrium between multiphase systems. The gas-liquid, liquid-liquid, and solid-liquid states of equilibrium in water systems need to be known with a sufficient degree of precision.

Our recent research activities have focused on:

• separation and purification of valued compounds from biorefineries, metals from waste and side streams, nutrients and other recyclable materials by crystallization and precipitation
• identification of critical impurities and their separation from solutions
• crystallization of mesocrystals for pharmaceutical applications
• regeneration of chemicals: concentration of aqueous solutions containing green solvents by freezing 
• pre-treatment of aqueous electrolyte solutions to remove fine particles by microfiltration and organic compounds by adsorption containing
• real-time monitoring of crystal growth and nucleation kinetics and separation efficiency of microfiltration