Prof Dr Ester Heath and colleagues Excellent in Science 2022 / 7.12.2022

The achievement entitled "New-age organic pollutants - how can we control them with algae?" was selected among the selection of achievements Excellent in Science 2022 in the field of medicine.

Dr. Ester Heath, Dr. David Heath, Dr. Ana Kovačič, and Dr. David Škufca are a part of the team working on program P3-0388 and projects J2-8162 and Z2-2643 whose research led to an awarded article.

They earned the award by developing an analytical method for determining modern pollutants in the water phase and in algal biomass, which helped to understand the mechanisms of their removal in algal cultures. At the laboratory level, they achieved up to 100% cleaning effect for most of the 28 modern pollutants, and biodegradation was also demonstrated for some of them. They studied their removal in a pilot algae pool, where they achieved 92% cleaning efficiency.

The achievement was published in four articles in journals with a high impact factor and presented at the conference "13th IWA Specialist Conference on Wastewater Ponds and Algal Technologies", for which
we received the award for the best presentation. The achievement is also important from the point of view of utility value in agriculture in times of climate and other social changes.