Abaynesh Yihdego Gebreyohannes has been awarded the 2018 Excellence Award in Membrane Engineering, which is jointly awarded by the Section on Membrane Engineering of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) and the European Membrane Society (EMS).
The Award recognises an outstanding PhD thesis in the field of membrane engineering. The judges praised Gebreyohannes’ work on Integrated membrane process for valorisation of waste water for its breadth and scientific impact which provides a better insight into the processes around waste water valorisation.
Waste valorisation is the process of reusing, recycling or composting waste materials and converting them into more useful products including materials, chemicals, fuels or other sources of energy. “Waste-to-energy” aspects are becoming more prominent due to the rapid depletion of natural resources and increase in waste generation.
Gebreyohannes' PhD work covered a broad area, including hydrodynamic and kinetic characterisation of bioreactors, study of fouling phenomena, membrane preparation (including the use of magnetic/super-paramagnetic properties) and characterisation, bio-hybridisation for tackling fouling, the study of forward osmosis and the recovery of high added value compounds from wastewater.
Gebreyohannes is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven in Belgium. An Ethiopian national, she completed her PhD under the Erasmus Mundus Doctorate in Membrane Engineering (EUDIME) programme, which saw her study at the University of Calabria, Italy, KU Leuven, Belguim and University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse III, France.
She will receive a €1500 prize and paid-for travel to receive the award, which will be presented at the Euromembrane 2018 Conference in Valencia, Spain from 9 to 13 July 2018.