InnovEOX Innovative Electrochemical OXidation Processes for the Removal and Analysis of micro-pollutants in water streams
Hi everyone! This is Gema Amaya, PhD student and ESR 15 of the MCSA ITN InnovEOX project. The subject of my thesis is to perform the Life Cycle Assessment and Cost Analysis of the emerging technologies that are being developed within the InnovEOX consortium to efficiently degrade resistant micropollutants from wastewater. One of the things I am enjoying the most about this PhD experience under this program is the opportunity I have to interact with the rest of my PhD colleagues (other 14 ESRs) and exchange info and knowledge with them.
This European project encourages the interaction between PhD students and the Industry, to broaden our skills, so they won’t limit only to an academic experience. With such purpose, all of us need to perform secondments – short term research stays, in some of the partner organizations in which we have the opportunity to get hands on experience while developing our research. As you might imagine, COVID-19 did not make it easy for us, since we all started during pandemic times. Fortunately, as things have been turning back to “normal” and restrictions for traveling are being lifting, we are all getting to benefit from this knowledge exchange experience.
I wanted to share with you the amazing time I had during one of my secondments at Nijhuis Saur Industries (Netherlands), a wastewater treatment company that provides solutions for sustainable water use all over the world.
During my stay there, I had the opportunity to work with lab and commercial scale wastewater treatment technologies using advance oxidation for micropollutant removal. Although my work is mainly computational, I also could perform some hands-on lab work (which I loved!). At Nijhuis Saur Industries, I had the chance to meet incredibly amazing and talented people, who made my stay at the company very enjoyable. Especial thanks to Nadine Boelee who made it happen!
Gema Amaya is an Environmental Engineer from Málaga (Spain) whose motivation for making the planet a better place to live has always led her steps. Throughout her training period and research career, she has acquired knowledge and skills in different fields of environmental engineering and management, implementing the concept of sustainable development to approach environmental problems.
She now would like to take a step further in the use of sustainability assessment in environmental problem solving, by taking an Early Stage Researcher position at UCL (University College of London), to work in the ESR15 InnovEOX project “Life-cycle assessment and cost analysis of emerging eAOP technologies” in which, under the supervision of Paola Lettieri (UCL)
