PhD Studentship: Grey Water Recycling With Nature Based Solutions

tart date: 24/03/2025   

Studentship funding

Sponsored through the EPSRC iCASE award with sponsorship from the Royal Horticultural Society his studentship will provide a bursary of up to £20,000 per annum (tax free) plus fees* for four years.

Type of opportunity 

Fully-funded studentship - Opportunities which are fully funded (e.g. covers all fees and stipend)

Eligibility & Related Project Details

Fee status of eligible applicants: UK

Duration of Award if full time preferred*: 4 years

1^st Supervisor: Professor Bruce Jefferson

2^nd Supervisor: Dr Marc Pidou 

Introductory Paragraph

This fully funded PhD, with a stipend of £20,000 pa, is sponsored by the Royal Horticultural Society and EPSRC. The research offers an exciting opportunity to develop a nature-based solution (NbS) for the treatment of greywater for irrigation use. This is an experimental program that will explore how the selection of plants and the design of a compact NbS system impacts the ability to clean greywater to a level suitable for garden irrigation.

Main Copy (advised structure)

There is not enough water to meet our needs. At least not from our traditional sources such that an emerging negative water supply-demand balance is expected across most of the UK. Particular note is given to the elevated demand during the summer months which is linked to outside use and especially horticultural irrigation. This can equate to a doubling of water use for some properties and this demand is difficult to meet from rainwater harvesting alone. An appropriate alternative is greywater recycling which can provide adequate water for horticultural irrigation all year round and hence remediate existing supply resilience challenges if adopted in locations with active horticulture from single household to large gardens (such as the RHS gardens). 

Previous work at Cranfield investigated the potential of NBS for greywater recycling and found that shallow vertical cascading wetlands planted with garden appropriate plants was very effective and could deliver a water quality similar to that of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) but at a reduced cost making it affordable for a large percentage of gardeners in the UK. However, the work identified key areas of unresolved science that inhibited further development and potential implementation around plant-water interactions. The aim of the PhD is to resolve such knowledge gaps to enable the development of a design approach for a plant-based technology to recycle greywater for horticultural irrigation. Initial discussions have identified two target applications: (1) A prototype single house systems and (2) a design for potential inclusion in RHS Wisely whereby greywater recycling enables the garden to no longer need river abstraction.

Entry requirements

Applicants should have a first- or second-class UK honours degree or international equivalent in a related discipline. This project would suit in a relevant subject such as chemical engineering, chemistry, environmental engineering, environmental science, horticultural science or other relevant engineering/science degree.

Funding

To be eligible for this funding, applicants must be a UK. We require that applicants are under no restrictions regarding how long they can stay in the UK i.e. have no visa restrictions.

How to apply

For further information please contact: Professor Bruce Jefferson
Email: b.jefferson@cranfield.ac.uk 

Keywords: greywater, nature based solutions, water recycling, horticulture

Application Deadline: 19/03/2025

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