Jan Hoinkis

Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences · Institute of Applied Research

The use of saline water resources in agriculture is becoming a common practice in semi-arid and arid regions such as the Mediterranean. In the SmaCuMed project, the desalination of brackish groundwater (TDS = 2.8 g/L) for the irrigation of Argan trees in Essaouira, Morocco, to 2 g/L and 1 g/L (33% and 66% salt removal, respectively) using low-press...

Membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) has shown many advances, however, its performance in combination with other treatment technologies has not been widely reported. In this study, a pilot-scale low-pressure reverse osmosis (LPRO) (FilmTec™ XLE-2540) with MCDI (CapDI© C17, Voltea) was developed and tested as a promising modular desalination syst...

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology has attracted great attention over the last 3 decades and achieved rapid growth in an increasing number of practical small‐ and large‐scale applications worldwide. However, its application in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as in aquaculture was so far limited. The installation and operation of a pilot membrane biore...

To develop easy-to-implement and low-energy water treatment plants, pilot trials for groundwater desalination and arsenic removal were carried out at the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Desalination was conducted by membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI), which can show low specific energy consumption (SEC) compared to other desalination technologies. An...

The main purpose of this study was to assess and rank suitable shallow aquifers for the implementation of a solar-PV desalination system (SmaIrriCube) in small-scale farms in arid and semi-arid Mediterranean regions, such as Tunisia. A GIS-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA-GIS) model was developed. A SMART method was applied to evaluate...

Recently, electrochemical oxidation water treatment is a promising method to solve environmental pollution issues. During the electrochemical oxidation process, electrode material is a critical factor affecting the treatment efficiency. Sb-doped SnO2 electrodes are reported as superiors for the decomposition of organic matters from water through th...

The study aimed to calculate a cost benefit analysis for a containerized membrane bioreactors (MBR) system with flow capacity of 10m 3 per day, suitable for use by fish industries within urban settlements such as Kisumu city in Kenya where land is scares and expensive. Further a comparative cost analysis for a containerized MBR system, activated sl...

An unprecedented solution for alleviating non-restorable fouling in water treatment membrane processes is herein proposed and described. A novel smart material with oxygenic activity was developed starting from a polymerizable bicontinuous microemulsion (PBM) containing a surfactant encapsulated polyoxometalate (SEP) as catalyst. This material (PBM...

In recently few years, application of membrane technologies in sea water desalination is increased compared to other desalination technologies. Electrodialysis membrane technology is still limited in seawater desalination due to the high operation cost and its limitations for high salty water. Electrodialysis desalination cost is proportional to th...

Many biological methods are currently used to treat wastewaters, such as e.g. aerobic, anaerobic, sequencing batch reactors, biofilters. However, these technologies are limited by low nutrient removal efficiency, high energy and large area requirements. Hereby, the intermittent cycle extended aeration system (ICEAS), or continuous flow sequencing b...

Various technologies are used for the treatment of arsenic (As) contaminated water, but only a few seem to be suitable for small-scale applications; these are mostly used in rural communities where the access to potable water is the most vulnerable. In this review paper, the salient advantages and most notable challenges of membrane-based technolog...

To evaluate energy efficient concepts for the modular treatment of brackish water, pilot trials for groundwater desalination and arsenic (As) removal were carried out in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Groundwater here is affected by naturally occurring high iron (Fe2+) and As concentrations, while, in coastal regions, groundwater is additionally contam...

Membrane modification is becoming ever more relevant for mitigating fouling phenomena within wastewater treatment applications. Past research included a novel low-fouling coating using polymerizable bicontinuous microemulsion (PBM) induced by UV-LED polymerization. This additional cover layer deteriorated the filtration capacity significantly, pote...

Im Beitrag wird das Online-Sensorsystem WATERTRACE vorgestellt, über das sich organische Substanzen aus wässrigen Proben bis in den Spurenbereich bestimmen lassen. Das System basiert auf einer Kombination aus automatisierter Probenvorbereitung mittels Destillation und anschließender UV-Vis-spektrometrischer Detektion. Für den Bereich der Trinkwasse...

The principle of subsurface arsenic removal (SAR) from groundwater is based on oxidation and adsorption reactions by infiltrating oxygen into the anoxic aquifer and the immobilization of arsenic (As) onto freshly formed iron (Fe) oxides. In this study, a pilot-scale plant for SAR has been subject to long term testing in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. I...

Lake Victoria, regionally important both as a food and income source, is under pressure due to overfishing and severe pollution. Currently, the vast majority of east African aquaculture is open pond based. The adoption of modern, sustainable, aquaculture technologies and practices – in this case study recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) – will...

A pilot-scale membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) unit was used for the selective removal of arsenic (up to 300 μg L–1 As(V)), ammonium (25 mg L–1 NH4+), and manganese (6 mg L–1 Mn2+) in experiments with brackish water. Tests were carried out using a commercially available MDCI module and different initial salt concentrations (total dissolved s...

Lake Victoria is a shared water resource between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which is the second largest freshwater lake in the world. It has long since suffered from the consequences of overexploitation of its resources, mainly fish stocks, and increasingly high pollution. The closure of 58% of the fish processing plants (FPPs) is attributed to th...

To find an energy-efficient way for desalinating water, is highly necessary if the process needs to be run by renewable energy. A promising approach is the technology of membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI). To make it deployable for sustainable drinking water production, modular pilot scaled concepts and modelling strategies have been developed...

CuO/ZnO composites are synthesized using a simple mechanochemical combustion method. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) are used to characterize the prepared oxides. X-ray diffraction reveals that the prepared CuO/ZnO exhibit a wurtzite ZnO c...

To find an energy-efficient way for desalinating water is highly necessary if the process needs to be run by renewable energy. A promising approach is the technology of membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI). To make it deployable for sustainable drinking water production, modular pilot scaled concepts and modeling strategies have been developed....

New polymeric films with antibacterial activity have been prepared, by simple UV-induced copolymerization of readily available ω-(acryloyloxy)-N,N,N-triethylalcan-1-aminium bromides (or acryloyloxyalkyltriethylammonium bromides, AATEABs) with commercially available 2-hydroethyl methacrylate (HEMA), at different relative amounts. In particular, the...

The objective of this paper is to deal with the design of a pilot-scale submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) and a short-term functionality test to be performed with textile wastewater. The design calculations were done based on the design parameters analysed from local textile wastewater and typical values of activated sludge kinetic coefficients....

The following paper summarizes the findings of a pilot study to develop a simple, low-cost, holistic water concept on fluoride removal from groundwater in rural communities of Tanzania; an ideal representative community for other areas in the world with similar problems. A small photovoltaic powered nanofiltration (NF) pilot plant was installed at...

Arsenic contamination in groundwater is a critical issue and one that raises great concern around the world as the cause of many negative health impacts on the human body, including internal and external cancers. There are many ways to remove or immobilize arsenic, including membrane technologies, adsorption, sand filtration, ion exchange, and capa...

A novel antifouling coating based on the polymerization of a polymerisable bicontinuous microemulsion (PBM) was developed and applied for commercially available membranes for textile wastewater treatment. PBM coating was produced by polymerizing, on a polyethersulfone (PES) membrane, a bicontinuous microemulsion, realized by finely tuning its prope...

Phenolic compounds are known as recalcitrant pollutants in many industrial wastewaters, e.g. olive mill wastewater. An efficient treatment is therefore needed before the discharge of phenol-containing wastewaters into the environment. The possibility of removing some natural occurring phenolics, namely tyrosol, p-coumaric acid and vanillic acid, by...

Im Bereich der wirkungsbezogenen Analytik (WBA) ist die Untersuchung der Hemmwirkung auf Leuchtbakterien (Vibrio fischeri) ein etabliertes Verfahren. Als Erweiterung zur Untersuchung der Gesamtprobe im Küvettentest wurde ein kombiniertes Fließinjektions- und Chromatographieverfahren entwickelt. Mit einem selbst aufgebauten Lumineszenzsensor in Komb...

Due to a worldwide growing population and the resulting rising demand for fresh water, the treatment of wastewater is becoming more and more important to meet the water demand in many countries that have limited access to freshwater sources. In several processes, as in textile industries, the produced wastewater is treated by membrane bioreactors (...

Invited for this month's cover are the collaborating groups at the University of Calabria (Unical, Italy)-Department of Chemistry and Chemical Technologies (CTC) and Department of Pharmacy and Health and Nutritional Sciences (PHNS), at the National Research Council (CNR, Italy), Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM), and at the Karlsruhe Universit...

This study reports an efficient and practical synthetic approach for the synthesis of a particularly important class of polymerizable quaternary ammonium salts (PQASs), that is, acryloxyalkyltriethylammonium bromides (AATEABs), which may find application as antimicrobial coatings for commercial membranes with antifouling and anti-biofouling propert...

The Fig. 7 (left) should be exchanged by the below corrected one. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.(figure presented)

Crystallization study of calcium sulfate dihydrate was studied under conditions of scales formation using pure chemicals and at low salinity. Calcium chloride and sodium sulfate were mixed in deionized water, and the conductivity of the reaction mixture was measured at different time periods to determine the induction time of gypsum crystal formati...

The road dusts (RD) are fugitive in nature causing potential health hazards to people living in highways. They are generated from different sources on the roads and being a valuable archive of environmental information. In the present work, contamination assessment of 18 heavy metals and ions in road dusts of the country are described. Techniques i...

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology combines the biological degradation process with micro- and ultrafiltration and is widely regarded as an effective tool for water treatment and water reuse owing to its high-quality water product and low footprint. MBR technology-treated water is of high clarity and is significantly reduced in germs so that it i...

A pilot-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) was developed in order to run two membrane modules in parallel for the treatment of model textile wastewater (MTDW). Two independently operated commercially available ultrafiltration membrane modules called UP150 from Microdyn-Nadir where tested in the same activated sludge tank over a period of 70 days for t...

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is one of the last techniques that allow a high quality of treated industrial effluents, which can be perfectly integrated into industrial processes, not only for the quasi-total reuse of water but also for the reduction of the manufacturing cost. The main objective of this work was to make a study, comparing the performan...

Road dusts contribute a large fraction of air pollution in urban environment of India. In the present work, contamination assessment of ions and elements i.e. F﹣, Cl﹣, NO-3, SO2-4, NH+4, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, As, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Pb and Hg in the road dusts of the most industrialized area of central India: Raipur (capital, Chhattisgarh state)...

At least 15% of 0.1 million people residing in 117 villages of Tamnar block (Chhattisgarh, central India) are suffering from fluorosis diseases. In this work, the contamination of F- in the environment (i.e. water, soil, rock and urine) of the Tamnar block is described. The concentration variations of F-, Cl-, NO3-, SO42-, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Al,...

For the first time in Bangladesh, a bench scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) unit was tested in treating a textile wastewater in the industry premises of EOS Textile Mills LTD, Dhaka for three months. The performance of the unit was compared with that of the conventional activated sludge treatment plant, which is in operation in the same premises. The...

Micellar Enhanced Ultrafiltration (MEUF) of different phenolic derivatives including para-coumaric acid, vanillic acid, and tyrosol, in aqueous solutions has been studied. The MEUF experiments were conducted using an anionic surfactant, namely, Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS). Two polyethersulfone membranes with different molecular weight cut-off (20...

This paper deals with the application of a submerged membrane bioreactor (SMBR) with commercial membrane module and novel MBR modulefor the treatment of model textile dye wastewater (MTDW). For this work, MTDW was developed based on different publications and a pilot-scale automated SMBR unit was applied to carry out the tests with this model waste...

The design procedure of an activated sludge plant consisting of an activated sludge reactor and settling tank has been theoretically analyzed assuming that (1) the Monod equation completely describes the growth kinetics of microorganisms causing the degradation of biodegradable pollutants and (2) the settling characteristics are fully described by...

Membrane bioreactor technology (MBR) a combination of the activated sludge process with micro- and ultrafiltration is widely regarded as an effective tool for industrial water treatment and water reuse due to its high product water quality and low footprint. Due to their robustness and flexibility submerged MBR systems are more and more preferred....