Jobs

PhD vacancy in the research group ‘Membrane Technology for a Sustainable World’, led by Prof. Patricia Luis at UCLouvain

Profile: Candidate with a Master diploma in the field of Chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, or similar. A plus if the candidate has experience with membrane technology and/or enzymatic conversions.

The candidate should have the following aptitudes:

• Willing to work in an international group
• Sociable, team worker, helpful and friendly
• Willing to teach in master or bachelor courses in English and/or in French
• Willing to travel (international conferences)
• English is a mandatory language (high level in writing and spoken English). Other languages spoken within the group are French, Spanish, Dutch, Persian, and Chinese, among others.
• Knowledge of Aspen Plus and SimaPro is a plus point

Status: 1-year PhD grant, renewable for 4 years, starting between 1st March 2023 to 1st October 2023.

Research topic: Continuous Enzymatic Pervaporation: a new era in Green Chemistry and Process Intensification (NewERA).

The NewERA project aims at developing a continuous enzymatic pervaporation process that combines REACTION and SEPARATION together in a CONTINUOUS mode.
Glycerol is considered as a key platform molecule for the production of glycerol carbonate, which also has a wide variety of applications as a component in detergent and personal care compositions, carriers in pharmaceutical preparations and in lithium and lithium-ion batteries, building ecocomposites, solvents, chemical intermediates and polymers, among others. To synthesize glycerol carbonate, glycerol -used as an alcohol source- is reacted with one carbonate source. In this project, the transesterification of glycerol with dimethyl carbonate is selected as a promising conversion route because it mostly produces only methanol as coproduct. A continuous process will be achieved with the application of hollow fiber or tubular membranes which will act as tubular reactors with an optimal residence time, ensuring the complete conversion of reagents over the length of the ‘tube’ and pure glycerol carbonate at the outlet of the reactor.

Application:

If interested, please send your CV, a motivation letter and one or more reference letters by email to:
Prof. Patricia Luis: patricia.luis@uclouvain.be

An interview (online or presential) will be organized with the selected candidates.

+ info research group: https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/immc/imap/membrane-technology.html

The University of Luxembourg is seeking to hire a highly motivated and outstanding researcher in the area of hydrogen reactors and membrane systems.

Your Role:
The Paul Wurth Chair* is building up a range of new experimental facilities, in collaboration with industrial partners and to pursue externally funded research projects, often involving Master’s and PhD students. These include:

• The construction of a catalytic reactor and separator system for conversion of ammonia to hydrogen-rich gas mixtures and purification of these gas mixtures
• The design and construction of an electrochemical system for detailed investigation of electrocatalysts and new electrochemical engineering concepts for production of hydrogen from ammonia
• The design and construction of thermal and catalytic pyrolysis reactors for hydrogen-rich gas mixtures.

Your role is to work intensively with fellow researchers, technicians, suppliers and partners to design, build and operate these experimental facilities. The Paul Wurth Chair is also procuring a wide range of new, state-of-the-art characterization equipment which you will also help commission, operate and maintain. Your writing tasks will include safety, operation documentation, reports to sponsors and partners, and research publications from the projects involving this equipment.

The position is particularly targeted at researchers who aim to establish their own independent research career (for example as a research group leader or junior/assistant professor), and to this end, extensive career development assistance will be provided. The appointed researcher will also help to prepare new research proposals for national and European projects, and if funded, help lead the projects to establish an independent research and funding track record.

Please direct any further questions to Professor Bradley Ladewig (bradley.ladewig@uni.lu)

In Short:
• Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract 36 Month (which may be extended up to five years)
• Work Hours: Full Time 40.0 hours per week
• The yearly gross salary for every Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg is EUR 77167 (full time).

How to apply:
For more information, please follow the link below. There you will also find a link to make the application.
https://recruitment.uni.lu/en/details.html?id=QMUFK026203F3VBQB7V7VV4S8&nPostingID=80876&nPostingTargetID=119499&mask=karriereseiten&lg=UK

Postdoc position (2 years)

At the Faculty of Chemistry, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen (Germany) a position related to the development of a customized membrane for application in a special redox-flow battery is open for appointment from March 15, 2023 within the research group Technical Chemistry II, lead by Prof. Dr. Mathias Ulbricht.
The postdoc (with background as chemist, materials scientist or chemical engineer) will be recruited for 2 years.

Job description
The Technical Chemistry II research group works in the field of functional polymer-based material, with a strong focus on developing novel membranes and contributing to advanced membrane-based technologies for water purification, bioseparation and energy conversion.

The postdoc will work in the research project “Increasing the power density and long-term stability of a zinc-polyiodide flow battery through customized membranes and optimized stack design” in close cooperation with the project team in the group Energy Technologies, Faculty of Engineering, University Duisburg-Essen.

The tasks of the postdoc will be:
– to develop scalable fabrication procedures for thin-film composite membranes with a barrier layer from a polymeric ionomer on a porous polyolefine support membrane
– to characterize the composite membrane structure and properties comprehensively
– to evaluate the separator performance and stability of the composite membrane
– to disseminate the results through written and oral communications
– to supervise undergraduate or master students that are contributing to the project.

Please find more information under this link.
https://www.jobvector.de/jobs-stellenangebote/chemie/wissenschaftliche-r-mitarbeiter-in/scientific-researcher-190335/

Please note that the regular websites at University Duisburg-Essen cannot be accessed currently, due to consequences of a severe cyberattack.

At the Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes (ISCR, UMR CNRS 6226) a position related to the fabrication of biopolymeric filtration membranes for liquid phase separations is open for appointment from 01 April 2023 within the team Chemistry and Process Engineering (Head: Pr. Anthony Szymczyk). The postdoc will be recruited for 18 months.

Job description
Membrane techniques are widely used in the biomedical field. For example, 300 million dialyzers are used each year for patients suffering from kidney disease and microfiltration and ultrafiltration are used in more than 70% of biopharmaceutical processes (e.g. vaccine production). For these 2 applications, single-use membranes are used for only a few hours and then replaced, generating a large amount of waste that is usually incinerated or landfilled. Thus, the main idea of this project is to address the issue of the end-of-life of membranes, from their manufacture, by designing, for the first time, biobased membranes that are compostable after use in the framework of a circular economy approach. The success of the project will lie in the ability to develop efficient additives allowing to fabricate membranes having the requested morphological and interfacial properties. The postdoc recruited will be in charge of the experimental part of the project.

The tasks of the postdoc will be:

– to carry out literature review related to the topic

– to synthetize amphiphilic block copolymers from biobased polymers and polyols as additive to improve the membrane properties.

– to fabricate micro- and ultrafiltration membranes using biobased polymers and the amphiphilic block copolymers by the phase inversion technique

– to characterize the membrane properties (morphology, surface properties, mechanical properties)

– to evaluate the filtration performance

– to evaluate membrane biodegradability

– to disseminate the results through written and oral communications

– to supervise undergraduate/master students.

Please find more information here.

At the EMI Twente we are hiring a new CEO. Please find the relevant information here

What we are looking for:

We want to work with highly-talented, ambitious scientists and engineers. You should therefore be able to demonstrate a track record (suitable for your career stage) that is based upon collaborative, thought-provoking laboratory research aligned with the Materials, Concepts and Reaction Engineering Group.

As this position will be funded by two specific research grants, you must have experience in laboratory experiments with ion-conducting ceramic membranes or molten salts, and, in addition, experience in one of the following: carbon dioxide separation processes; experimental study of gas-solid and/or gas-liquid reactions; experimental study of ion transport processes.

Your role will be to fabricate and characterise supported molten-salt membranes, which will include inorganic materials synthesis, gas sorption/permeation testing, and (typically via external collaboration) inorganic materials characterisation (diffraction, tomography, microscopy, spectroscopy, surface area and porosity analysis etc).

More details here