Sustainable Wastewater Treatment Through Photocatalysis

Start of the “Born-To-Degrade” research project

The rapidly growing world population requires a lot of water and in turn produces vast quantities of wastewater, which is contaminated with pollutants of all kinds. Without treatment, these enormous quantities of wastewater would have devastating consequences for people and the environment. In addition, natural sources of drinking water have long since ceased to be sufficient to supply more than eight billion people, which is why drinking water must also be treated from wastewater. Research at the MCI has been dedicated to this complex of topics for many years with a wide variety of projects.

The official kick-off of the “BorN-To-Degrade” research project took place at MCI on 24.02.2025, which is being realized in cooperation between our university, the University of Innsbruck and the company IonOXess. The project, which will be made possible over the next three years by the FFG funding “Bridge”, is dedicated to the development of a new method for the environmentally friendly and effective purification of wastewater through the use of photocatalysis - a process in which light energy is used to accelerate a chemical reaction.

Under the leadership of Dr. Jan Back and with the participation of PhD student Daniel Rattinger, the project aims to advance the technology of photocatalytic degradation of pollutants from wastewater. The project focuses on the use of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as a starting material for modifications designed to optimize the efficiency of the material for the photocatalytic degradation of pollutants and antibiotic resistance from wastewater. h-BN is a material that is considered particularly promising in a scientific context due to its interesting chemical and physical properties and could play a key role in the rapid and effective degradation of pollutants such as organic compounds and industrial chemicals in wastewater.

The project builds on the successful synthesis of the modified material and aims to provide novel methods with which model pollutants can be degraded quickly and, above all, economically in realistic scenarios. The proposed method represents an important step in the further development of environmentally friendly water treatment, particularly due to the non-substance-specific degradation, which seems advantageous in view of the variety of dissolved substances. The successful implementation of the project could not only increase the efficiency of wastewater treatment, but also lead to a significant reduction in the environmental impact of industrial wastewater.

The research project is being carried out jointly by experts from the Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Radiochemistry at the University of Innsbruck, the company IonOXess, and the MCI research focus areas Process & Energy Technologies and Food Science & Biotechnology, with the partners contributing their expertise in the fields of materials science, chemistry, analytics, process engineering, microbiology and sustainable technology development. The close cooperation between the universities and companies is intended to ensure that the scientific findings of the project can be put into practice. The kick-off of “BorN-To-Degrade” marks the beginning of a promising research project that is expected to provide new scientific and practical insights that can be eagerly awaited over the next three years.

The start of the project was unfortunately overshadowed by the unexpected and much too early loss of PD Dr. Rania Bakry, who was to coordinate and scientifically support the project on the part of the University of Innsbruck.