Eurecat (www.eurecat.org) is the main Research & Technology Organisation in Catalonia and the second largest private research organization in southern Europe. It brings together the experience of more than 700 professionals who generate an annual turnover of 55,8 million euros and provides services to more than 2,000 companies. Applied R&D, technological services, highly specialized training, technological consultancy or valorisation and exploitation of industrial property are some of the services that Eurecat offers for both large and small and medium-sized enterprises in all sectors. The technology centre participates in more than 200 large national and international consortium projects of high strategic R&I and has 181 patents and 10 spin-offs. The added value provided by Eurecat accelerates innovation, reduces spending on scientific and technological infrastructures, reduces risks and provides specialized knowledge tailored to each company. It has eleven centres in Catalonia (Spain) and one in Chile (Latam).

We are looking for a potential candidate to work on a research excellence project on the application of innovative membrane-based processes as an alternative to traditional reverse osmosis (RO) for seawater desalination and brine treatment. The goal is to achieve with these a minimal environmental impact, waste generation and energy consumption.
The candidate will work with membrane crystallization (MCr) as well as other desalination techniques such as membrane distillation (MD), osmotically assisted RO (OARO) and low salt rejection RO (LSRRO). The student project will have a theoretical part in which the candidate will review the State-of-the-art for each of the desalination techniques proposed. Afterwards, the candidate will work experimentally with the aforementioned techniques. Parameters such as permeate flux, permeability, transmembrane pressure/temperature gradient, recovery, salt rejection, energy consumption, among others, will be evaluated to compare the selected membrane techniques.