Leong Chew Lee

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals”, have raised global attention in recent years due to their high persistence in the environment and toxicity to human health. Ensuring access to safe drinking and irrigation water requires effective PFAS removal methods. This research aims to develop high-throughput green membrane adsorbers for selective capturing of PFAS compounds from aqueous streams. This is achieved using electrospinning technology to produce functional membrane adsorbers that are open, highly porous, robust structures and have a low flow resistance. Already in the polymer, upon electrospinning or in a post-modification step, specific functionalities that rely on e.g. electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions or affinity that selectively adsorb persistent PFAS compounds are introduced. These porous, functional membranes are arranged in a column to form hierarchical porous structures to allow high-throughput processing of feed streams from e.g. the chemical industry, wastewater treatment plants or pharmaceutical industry.

Leong Chew Lee received her BSc in Chemical Engineering from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia, in September 2020. During her bachelor’s internship, she spent five months with the Membrane Technology Group at KU Leuven, Belgium, where she was involved in the "Development of Micro-Patterned Membranes for Forward Osmosis" project. For her bachelor project, she developed phase inversion membranes from cigarette butt waste for oil/water emulsion separation. In 2022, Leong pursued her MSc in Chemical Engineering at Universiti Malaya, Malaysia, where her research focused on biological nitrogen removal using low dissolved oxygen for tropical sewage in a pilot study. On July 1^st 2024, she embarked on her PhD journey at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Wetsus under the supervision of Professor Kitty Nijmeijer (TU/e), Dr. Zandrie Borneman (TU/e) and Dr. Jan Post (Wetsus). Driven by her passion for clean and safe water, she is working on the development of high-throughput membrane adsorbers via electrospinning for selective removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).