The treatment of water is a promising field where nanotechnology can help to solve issues in a number of ways. Improvements in filtration technologies, especially with regard to increasing throughput, improving selectivity and reducing clogging, could have a major impact on the economics of existing filtration applications. The new filter technologies might be used for the treatment of ballast water, drinking water and grey water on ships

The research focus of this topic will be water cleaning technology and quality assessment of water cleaning installations. Application areas are ships, offshore installations and land based installations. The motivation for this research topic has several reasons:

• IMO has passed new rules on ballast water management.
• In the offshore sector, Norway is lowering the amount of oil that can be released into nature by the spill of produced water into the sea from 40 ppm to 30 ppm (SFT). Again, new solutions have to be developed and verified.
• The Water Framework Directive by the EU requires that all partners in a given river basin manage their waters together in close co-operation. It requires that countries set up a common “River Basin Management Plan” with measures to ensure that the ambitious objectives of the Directive will be met within the given deadlines.