Drying as a unit operation accounts for 15-25% of all energy used in the processing industry. With the industry now pivoting towards sustainable biobased materials that are rich in water content, it is essential to find alternatives to conventional and energy-intensive evaporative dewatering techniques. The NWO-enabled KIC ELECTRIFIED program is a consortium comprising academic and industrial partners created for developing electrically driven dewatering technologies. These technologies will be developed and investigated in three work packages, focusing on 1) electro-responsive hydrogels functioning as membranes, 2) well-controlled electro-osmosis enabled due to charged biomass surfaces, and 3) electrohydrodynamic drying done under high voltage conditions, respectively. 

As part of his PhD in the MMP group, Sarthak will focus on the development of an electro-osmotic dewatering process and evaluation its key parameters and performance. Relevant parameters such as pH, electrical energy consumption, and biomass surface charges will be investigated to tailor the process for industrial applications. Different system layouts shall be evaluated using commercial as well as tailored materials for membranes and electrodes, which will then be optimized by consolidating the knowledge produced by other members of the consortium.

In March 2023, Sarthak Mehta joined as a Doctoral candidate at the Membrane Materials and Processes Group in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Chemistry of the TU/e. Sarthak received his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Shiv Nadar University, India after which he worked as an Associate R&D engineer at a startup focusing on electrochemical wastewater treatment systems. Sarthak then went on to pursue his MSc diploma in Chemical Engineering from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. During his master's thesis, Sarthak conducted a rheological investigation on chitosan-based ionic gels for 3D printing-based biomedical applications.