Department of Environmental Science

Scientific focus areas:

Processes concerning xenobiotics (organic micro-pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, personal care compounds, biocides, flame retardants etc.) in the environment and in technical processes with a strong focus on degradation, transformation and phase partitioning and enantioselective processes. Technically my group has 2 focus areas:

I)    Removal of organic micropollutants from water and thus designing water treatment of the future. All technologies that have a potential to remove micropollutants are of interest, but special interest are biofilm technologies to degrade and metabolize organic micropollutants with reactors of various formats. Currently we work a lot with moving bed biofilm reactors and porous media biofilm reactors. Additionally improved advanced oxidation, membrane bioreactors, nano-filtration and reactive nanotechnologie is addressed.

II)  Release, emissions and distribution of organic micropollutants in the environment. The molecular and structural mechanisms that are releasing a compound from its place of use are studied. This holds e.g. for the emissions of biocides from composite building materials, for which size of molecule, lipophilicity and UV-vis spectra of the biocide are relevant as well as lipophilicity, density and porosity of the composite material and exposure of the building part to rain and sun.   

It is important to me to combine (molecular) process understanding, system knowledge and chemical analytical capabilities at the highest possible level. 
It is the intention to organize a rapid transition from knowledge into technology thus several projects are run together with water utilities and water industries.

 http://projects.au.dk/Waterpurification/