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Water is the bloodstream of the biosphere, but we are profoundly changing the water cycle. This is now affecting the health of the entire planet, making it significantly less resilient to shocks. A reassessment of the planetary boundary for freshwater indicates that it has now been transgressed, according to a recent assessment. The paper was performed by an international consortium, led by by Stockholm Resilience Centre, and published on Nature, April 2022.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant worth up to 280,000 euros to two highly promising young scientists of the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences. The grant provides them with the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years. A total of nine Veni's have been awarded to TU Delft researchers.

At the end of this month, two years have passed since I started working at the African Water Corridor Initiative. It will be also 18 months since I have left behind my life in the Netherlands to start my new life in West Africa, in Ghana. My name is Jasper Schakel and in contrast like many other people working at the TU Delft, my employer is not the TU Delft, but the international engineering firm Witteveen+Bos. Two years ago I talked with Doris van Halem where she introduced me to the African Water Corridor

After almost four years of lab research, the AdOx process will be tested on pilot plant scale. AdOx is an innovative technology for removal of organic micropollutants (OMPs), such as pharmaceuticals, from domestic wastewater effluent. It combines adsorption with oxidation: zeolite granules remove OMPs from treated wastewater effluent by adsorption in a fixed bed filter, and the zeolite filter is regenerated with ozone gas after the zeolite granules are exhausted. The process is very selective for OMPs, cost-effective and extremely sustainable: the CO2-footprint is low, no bromate and oxidation by-products are released to the receiving surface water, and the ozone use is low. It is a very competitive technology compared to GAC filtration and direct ozonation of wastewater effluent.

The Department of Water Management is proud to announce the winner of the Cees Boeter Award for the best BSc thesis written in the 2018-2019 academic year.

On the occasion of his 25th doctoral degree promotion, department chair Luuk Rietveld, professor of Drinking Water & Urban Water Cycle Technology, received the bronze TU Delft honorary medal from Rector Tim van der Hagen.

We know that coral reefs worldwide are in decline, but remarkably little is known about how exactly this happens. That is why a multidisciplinary team of Dutch and Caribbean researchers, including TU Delft’s Boris van Breukelen, will investigate this in the coming years. The project ‘SEALINK’ was recently awarded 3,5 million euros of funding as part of the Caribbean Research programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Developments in areas such as digital twins, instrumentation and artificial intelligence all connect to open up digital opportunities for utilities. The Source hears from contributors on these themes to the IWA digital white paper series.