Apply for a job online: Three PhD Fellowships in Environmental Engineering and Process Modelling

Three years full salary for doing a PhD.

The Department of Environmental Engineering is looking for 3 PhD students for an international and cross-disciplinary research project (LaGas), with the objective to untangle the mystery behind biological production and consumption of N2O in waste water treatment operations

Positions at the Technical University of Denmark are available on the topics:
PhD 1: Development and implementation of a novel whole-plant quantification tool to estimate GHG emissions based on gas plume measurements. The student will use a very promising gas plume method to measure downwind N2O gas concentrations using a dynamic sampling approach. The concept behind this approach has earlier been applied to measure methane emissions from landfills. Emphasis will be on the development of a best practice guide for quantification of N2O emission from full-scale wastewater treatment plants by conducting measurements under different tracer configuration and meteorological conditions, and the best practice guide will be used to measure gas emissions at several sites under different management conditions of the plants.

PhD 2: Investigations on N2O production and emission at reactor-scale from conventional and innovative mainstream and side-stream nitrogen removal technologies. In collaboration with PhD 1, the student will measure and analyze N2O production and emission at reactor-scale at several full-scale WWTPs and in controlled laboratory settings. Comprehensive real-time on-line N2O measurements will be performed in both liquid and gas phase to continuously monitor and record the overall N2O emissions at WWTPs using different process configuration for nitrogen removal, and at different nitrogen loads, operational conditions and different seasons. The ultimate goal is obtain rigorous N2O footprints across a representative set of process configurations and operations.

PhD 3: Development and validation of physiochemical and biokinetic process models for N2O dynamics in wastewater. The PhD fellow will develop biokinetic process models for mixed autotrophic nitrifying, heterotrophic denitrifying and anammox communities, which will explicitly include dissolution and liquid-to-gas mass-transfer of N2O. Lab-scale experiments will be performed in collaboration with a post doctoral associate to estimate model parameters for all studied systems and calibrate and validate models. Model identification, calibration and evaluation exercises are carried out using laboratory- and full-scale measurements in close collaborations with PhD 2 and the PhD student at The University of Southern Denmark (please see Job Opportunities at LaGas). The models are subsequently explored for individual scenario analysis to identify best- and worst-case operational conditions. The candidate will mainly use several simulation platforms (Matlab®, Simulink® and WEST®).

More info in:

http://www.job.dtu.dk/English.aspx?guid=b78d15ff-c9e3-4914-9712-72898ea85d88