On the 10th December Aikaterini “Katie” Spiliotopoulou received the ”Trophées Performance” award for the best external master thesis project on water at the Veolia headquarter in Paris.
Her master thesis project: “Photolysis and secondary formation of disinfection by-products by UV treatment of swimming pool water” explain why UV treatment intended to remove chloramines from swimming pools occasionally causes concentrations of other chlorination byproducts to increase. Katie showed the mechanism is that organic molecules becomes more reactive towards chlorine, so the formation occur in the swimming pool after the water has passed the UV-reactor. Further she discovered a previously undescribed mechanism by which brominated disinfection byproducts increase in UV treated swimming pools.
Katie has won a trip to Singapore with 800 € to spend and the supervisors receives 3.000 €.
Henrik R. Andersen is supervisor