PhD defense of Janneke Dickhout “Membrane fouling during produced water treatment”

Janneke will defend her Ph.D. thesis titled “Membrane fouling during produced water treatment” on the 1st of November at 12.30 pm in the Waaier Building.

She is part of the Membrane Surface Science (MSuS) group in the Membrane Science and Technology (MST) cluster, part of the MESA+ Institute of Nanotechnology. She worked in the cooperation framework of Wetsus, European Center of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology. 

Janneke's work aims to create increased understanding regarding membrane fouling by oil-in-water emulsions, and more specifically regarding membrane fouling by produced water(PW). In order to study the interaction between oil droplets and a surface, she developed a novel flow cell technique which allows facile visual inspection of droplets on surfaces under an applied shear force. This technique is used to study droplet adhesion of surfactant-stabilized emulsion as a function of ionic strength. The influence of ionic strength on membrane filtration of oil in water emulsions stabilized by four different surfactants was also studied.