Othon Moultos has been awarded an NWO OTP grant of 1 million euros for water treatment research

News - 13 April 2023 - Webredactie 3mE

The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awards funding to seven research projects through the Open Technology Programme, a programme that gives companies and other organisations a way to join scientific research that should lead to applicable knowledge. One of the seven proposals has been awarded to Othon Moultos, Assistant Professor at the Process & Energy department of 3mE with for his project “SYROP - Intelligent design of sustainable Sugar(cYclodextrin)-based adsorbents for the Removal of Organic microPollutants and PFAS from water’’. The total budget of SYROP is 1 million euros.

Combatting Toxic Micropollutants in Water

Per/polyfluorinated alkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, are a diverse class of environmentally persistent, toxic, and carcinogenic trace pollutants in drinking water. PFAS and other harmful micropollutants are products of everyday domestic, industrial, and agricultural activities. The concentration of such pollutants in drinking water, even at trace levels, poses a grave threat to the environment and public health. New European Directives call for urgent measures to remove PFAS (and other harmful pollutants) from drinking water because the traditional drinking water treatment technologies will not be able to comply with the new standards.  

O. Moultos

My research is fully focused on applying molecular thermodynamics to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable future. Water is undoubtedly a big part of it.

SYROP: Sustainable Water Treatment Innovations

To this end, the SYROP project will utilize advanced molecular modelling techniques, machine learning, and experiments to design and develop new sustainable and highly efficient sugar-based adsorbents that can selectively remove high-priority harmful components during water treatment. The research effort led by Moultos comprises an interdisciplinary “dream team” of researchers; the experimentalist Dr. Kim Lompe who focuses on the removal of emerging pollutants using adsorption and ion exchange processes (Assistant Prof. Water Management at CiTG), the machine learning expert Dr. Riccardo Taormina (Assistant Prof. Water Management at CiTG, and co-director of the TU Delft AI AidroLab), modelling expert Prof. Thijs Vlugt (Prof. Engineering Thermodynamics), and membrane filtration specialist Dr. Bas Heijman (Associate Prof. Water Management).

The SYROP team also includes top researchers from the industry; Dr. Ling and Dr. Barin from Cyclopure (world leader cyclodextrin chemistry company), Prof. van der Hoeke from Waternet (the water utility of Amsterdam and surroundings), and de Jong and Dr. Nieuwenhuijzen from Wittenveen+Bos (a company with 4000+ projects experience in environmental engineering). SYROP will combine for the first time advanced molecular modeling, machine learning, and experimentation to design and develop the new generation of sustainable and efficient sugar-based adsorbents that can selectively remove high-priority harmful components during water treatment.

Moultos highlights: ‘’These new adsorbents will have distinct advantages over current state-of-the-art materials for water treatment (e.g., activated carbon), and our aim is for them to become the new standard. Such a multi-disciplinarily approach has never been applied for designing adsorbents and it is expected to create a paradigm shift in the field.’’

“My research here in Process & Energy is fully focused on applying molecular thermodynamics to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable future. Water is undoubtedly a big part of it. I am confident that the SYROP project will be the basis for a solid and permanent research effort in the field of water treatment in the Mechanical Engineering faculty in TU Delft.”

For more information, please read the press release of NWO.

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