Partners - MBR-TRAIN
Process optimisation and fouling control in membrane bioreactors for wastewater and drinking water treatment

The Institut fuer Verfahrenstechnik was founded in 1952. Head of the Institute and of the `Reaction Engineering`-group is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Th. Melin. The `Mechanical Unit Operations`-group is led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. M. Modigell. The main fields of activity and responsibility lie in the basic and industrial research as well as in the fundamental education of our students. Beyond that we offer a broad range of services covering engineering expertises, technical experiments, and computer simulations. Currently, the IVT has a total staff of about 50 employees including 30 research engineers, a mechnical workshop and a large analytical laboratory. Main research activities are
- Membrane Technology
- Crystallisation
- Reaction Technology
- High Temperature Technology
- Energy- and Environmental Technology
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Preparative Electrophoresis
- Rheology

The Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH) is one of the largest and most awarded technical universities in Germany. There are 260 departments at RWTH, the number of students is around 30,000 and about 10,000 staff members. The Department of Chemical Engineering (Institut für Verfahrenstechnik - IVT) is presently coordinating the AQUAREC-project (EVK1-CT-2002-00130) on `Integrated Concepts of Reuse of Upgraded Wastewater` (www.aquarec.org). This project is complementary to the EUROMBRA project and aims to provide the basis for best practice in wastewater reuse in Europe. The IVT has played a leading role in propagating membrane technology in Germany through research, publications and teaching. Currently 15 PhD-students work on membrane technology in publicly funded projects and in cooperative research with membrane and module manufacturers and users in industry. IVT has just successfully completed another two EC-projects on pervaporation with inorganic membranes (JOE3-CT97-0074) and (ENK6-CT-1999-0001). IVT has been successful in two recent FP6 applications: The AQUABASE project (MEST-CT-2004-505169) on organic micropollutants in the aquatic environment is an Early Stage Research Training Site in the Marie Curie Programme. IVT is member of the consortium in an Integrated Project on water stress mitigation (AQUASTRESS). Since October 2005, IVT is coordinating the Reclaim Water project. In addition to that, IVT is cooridnating the MBR - Train project, which is another Marie Curie project and part of the MBR-NETWORK cluster.