I am a chemical engineer and Assistant Professor at the Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials, Maastricht University. My work combines process engineering with environmental and economic assessment. During my PhD at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, I developed hybrid processes for industrial wastewater treatment. This included pilot-scale catalytic ozonation with Cu-doped ZnO, an advanced Fenton process for landfill leachate, and a bioelectrochemical membrane reactor for wastewater treatment and energy recovery. I also conducted an LCA of a textile wastewater treatment plant to examine the effects of electricity, chemicals, transport, and water reuse.
I work on LCA, life cycle costing, techno-economic assessment, social LCA, circularity and Safe and Sustainable by Design. My research covers biobased materials, chemicals, coatings, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, water reuse, hydrogen and waste valorisation. I use SimaPro, GaBi, openLCA, Brightway, ecoinvent, Aspen Plus, MATLAB and Python. I have published more than 10 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. In a consortium, I can lead or contribute to a sustainability work package, from defining the assessment framework and data needs to comparing process routes and scale-up scenarios.
Keywords: life cycle assessment; techno-economic assessment; wastewater treatment; sustainable chemicals and materials.
Topic 1. Integrated Monitoring and Assessment for Sustainable Water Management
Topic 3. Smart, Secure and Adaptive Water Infrastructures for Sustainable Water Management
Topic 4. Resilient Water Systems Through Systemic Change, Policy Coherence and Inclusive Governance
At AMIBM, we are interested in projects under all four topics, with our strongest contribution in Topic 1, Integrated Monitoring and Assessment for Sustainable Water Management, and Topic 3, Smart, Secure and Adaptive Water Infrastructures. We assess whether water-management technologies remain environmentally and economically viable from laboratory research to pilot and industrial scale. Our expertise covers life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, techno-economic assessment, social LCA, circularity, resource efficiency, regionalised impact assessment and Safe and Sustainable by Design. We can lead a sustainability work package and define functional units, system boundaries, reference systems, indicators and data requirements. Using technical and monitoring data, we can compare treatment, reuse and resource-recovery routes, identify environmental and cost hotspots, and assess uncertainty and scale-up scenarios. The analysis can cover energy and chemical demand, water recovery, emissions, infrastructure, residual treatment, recovered products and operating costs. For Topic 2, we can compare nature-based approaches with conventional and hybrid water-treatment systems on a life-cycle basis. For Topic 4, we can integrate environmental, economic, social and circularity results into a decision framework. This would help partners compare design options, identify trade-offs and set measurable conditions for further development and implementation.
life cycle assessment (lca), life cycle costing (lcc), techno-economic assessment (tea), sustainable water management, wastewater treatment, water reuse, resource recovery, circular economy, safe and sustainable by design (ssbd), technology scale-up assessment