[5] The South African Research Chair in Sustainable Process Engineering was established in 2013 under Professor Thokozani Majozi.

On the other hand, work on Continuous Process Integration is focused on Utilities Debottlenecking for energy and water optimization.

The Chair's recent studies have also addressed systems that exhibit the water-energy nexus, as traditionally encountered in integrated water and membrane networks.

[8] The Industrial and Mining Water Research Unit comprises several researchers in chemical engineering, microbiology and other disciplines, investigating acid mine drainage (AMD),[9] constructed wetlands, water footprinting, life-cycle assessment[10][11] and more.

The group consists of Prof. Selo Ndlovu, Prof. Vusi Sibanda, Dr. Lizelle van Dyk, Dr. Geoffrey Simate and Prof. Herman Potgieter.

A number of postgraduate students are being supervised on various projects ranging from bioleaching of metals to gas phase extraction of vanadium from spent catalysts.