The PDEng programme continues

By Ellard Groenewegen

A next group of trainees has reached the second year of the PDEng programme Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). This programme focuses on the development of innovations for the civil industry in PDEng projects by converting results from fundamental research into solutions for environmental and public transport issues.  The projects that are being carried out by this group of PDEng trainees within the Sanitary Engineering, are about reuse and recovery of resources from waste water and rainwater capture treatment-storage solutions for urban areas with the BlueBloqs system. In the project on recovery of CO₂ condensate from industrial waste water, technology developed by Sanitary Engineering is used as the basis for the design of a full scale system in large production plant of nitrogen fertilizers and industrial chemicals.

In addition to the Sanitary Engineering trainees, also participants from Rijkswaterstaat and ProRail have joined the PDEng programme with projects about the development of a method for bed-sealing of canals and the design of a method for evaluation of data for the support of preventive maintenance for railway switches.

A third PDEng group that started with the programme  in March this year consists of four trainees from ProRail and two water management participants who will work on removal of contaminants from municipal waste water and the development of a method for pipe replacements prioritisation in drinking water distribution networks.