Wetsus Scholarships 2011-2013

Wetsus has formed a scholarship program to stimulate talented students to enter the MSc specialization Water technology. With regard to the funding of students, Wetsus will award scholarships to anticipate in expenses for tuition fee, accommodation or/and basic living expenses. These scholarship are paid by companies, associated with Wetsus as participants.

Course descriptions

Biological water treatment and recovery technology

In the past the main objective of industrial as well as municipal wastewater treatment was to produce an effluent that could comply with the discharge standards to surface waters. Today this objective more and more is combined with reuse of the treated water and the recovery of valuable resources from wastewater. Typical examples of such resources are organic matter to be recovered as energy, phosphorus, sulfur and nitrogen. Both objectives can be accomplished by smart combinations of microbiological conversion processes and/or microbiologically induced crystallization processes. During this course an overview will be presented of the microbiological, thermo dynamical, and kinetic aspects of relevant biological processes. In several case studies the students will learn how this knowledge, combined with characteristics substrate properties of (multiple-component) wastewaters and environmental conditions, (1) can be used to make a technological design of a biological wastewater treatment plant, and (2) how appropriate mixed-cultures of microorganisms can be selected, which can do their job at a sufficiently high rate.

Process design

This course deepens the knowledge of students and focuses on the integration of the various disciplines of Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering. The students are working project oriented at a feasible research subject.

Transport phenomena in Water technology

This course treats the quantitative description of the different transport mechanisms for mass, momentum and energy and the corresponding conservation laws in a systematic manner in order to describe velocity, temperature and concentration profiles in process equipment as a function of time and position.

Advanced water treatment processes

The course comprises two parts. First, the theoretical framework of Maxwell-Stefan is introduced to describe multi-component mass transport. Secondly, the Maxwell-Stefan modeling is applied to molecular separation problems based on adsorption, absorption and membrane separations. The first part is classical in its educational methods: lectures followed by exercises. The second part enrolls the student in the teaching activities. Students develop and present materials in lectures. Case studies carried out in MathCad deepen the presented theory.

Colloid chemistry

General treatment of colloidal systems and their relevant interfaces. Thermodynamics of curved interfaces and adsorption at surfaces. Methods to determine surface tension. Recent developments in adhesion and wetting. Insight into (theories of) colloidal stability, charged interfaces and the electro-kinetic behavior of colloids.

Mathematical principles in Water technology

A solid knowledge and flexible use of mathematics is often required in understanding problems in the domain of the water treatment. This course contains the essential mathematics to solve engineering problems. The student deepens and broadens the knowledge about the calculus of functions of one variable and the student gains more understanding and using the calculus of functions of more variables.

Process dynamics and control

How can a water technological system be operated in a way that satisfies the user? This is the main question addressed in this course. We will start with introducing the powerful and general state space model representation as our main tool. Having the model, its behaviour can be analysed by analytical tools and by simulation. This guides the selection of sensors, actuators and sampling intervals. Next we need control. This requires specification of the objectives of the system. It is convenient to tackle the problem at various hierarchical levels governed by the time constants. At the fastest level the purpose is to create immunity against disturbances. We will examine the tuning of low level controllers, and will find out about stability and robustness. At the next level, multi-variable control tackles the problem of interaction. Finally, there is a supervisory level, where the task is to achieve the overall best performance, according to user defined goals of robustness, safety and economy. Dynamic optimization is the most powerful technique for this. The knowledge gained cannot only be used for system operation, but also to discover bottlenecks in the design.

Global water cycle

This module introduces students to the demand for water process innovation in an international contest. It makes a broad distinction between water technology demand in three types of country environment: low-income countries, emerging markets and high-income countries. Each of these country categories grapples with a different set of issues. Low-income countries prioritize meeting basic human needs for water and combating waterborne infections, Emerging markets face the challenge of solving the water quantity and quality problems caused by rapid industrial growth and urbanization. High-income countries seek ways of closing urban and industrial water cycles in order to protect their ecological integrity. Each of these three water markets is associated with specific sets of institutional context variables, contaminant profiles. These drive and constrain demand for water process technologies. The course will also show examples of these technological solutions. Students are familiarized with this framework and proceed to apply it to select country cases.

Water microbiology

The Water Microbiology course is an introductory course that addresses various aspects of physiology and ecology of micro-organisms that are important for the functioning of natural and man-made aquatic ecosystems. The lectures will deal with the following topics: diversity of micro-organisms in aquatic ecosystems, microbial cycling of nutrients, bioenergetics of microbial processes, microbial growth, with special focus on biofilms, microbial interactions with their living and abiotic environment, molecular methods for detection and identification of micro-organisms and their metabolic activities. Apart from the lectures, the students will perform a literature study, where they will prepare a synthesis from a small number of papers on a selected topic in the field of water microbiology. In the experimental part, the students will be introduced in the application of molecular methods for the characterization of composition and diversity of microbial communities that can be found in natural aquatic ecosystems and those relevant in biotechnological applications. Techniques include DNA extraction, 16S rRNA gene-targeted PCR based quantification and fingerprinting, and fluorescent in situ hybridization.

Chemical and bioreactor design for water treatment

The course teaches you how to set up mass and energy balances for reactors applied in water technology, taking into account simultaneous conversion and transport processes. Following an introduction on reaction kinetics, mass exchange, simple (bio)reactor and multi-phase(bio)reactor models in water treatment, bioreactors with cell retention, with cell aggregates and photo-bioreactors will be made explicit and discussed.

Conditions for a Water technology scholarship are:

• Approved admission to Wageningen university, the University of Twente or the University of Groningen for the MSc program Biotechnology or the MSc program Chemical engineering;
• Students originating from and currently living in a new European member state or a candidate country*, Spain, Portugal or Greece are encouraged to apply;
• Also talented students with a GPA of 80% or higher are encouraged to apply;
• Working experience is not a prerequisite;
• Applicants are preferable under the age of 30.

Additional information

• A Water technology scholarship comprises a maximum of 10.000 euros per student per year;
• The maximum period is two years (2011-2013)for students with an adeqaute progress and results during the first year;
• A board of 3 independent scholars will assign the fellowships;
• Deadline for scholarship application is the 1st of May 2011;
• Deadline for scholarship allocation is the 1st of June 2011;
• To apply send a completed registration form (including a short essay “why you should be nominated to obtain a scholarship”) by e-mail to

[email protected]

* Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Croatia)

For more information please visit http://www.wetsusacademy.nl/?m_id=56&c_id_middle=48&t=Fees_and_finance

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