Leticia Fernandez

"Human activity generates a series of waste products that contaminate our water supplies. Such mundane actions as washing dishes and removing makeup send a series of organic compounds through the pipes and into the sewer system that must be filtered out. To this end, sewage treatment plants use a series of active carbon filters that retain the contaminants that cannot be neutralized. Little by little, the filters become clogged with compounds, necessitating their removal and restoration in order to continue to serve their purpose. The young, Asturian innovator Leticia Fernández has devised a technique that allows these components to degrade these compounds within the filter itself in real-time.

Fernández chose this topic as part of her chemical engineering PhD thesis at the National Carbon Institute (Spain). She took her first steps towards this achievement with an important discovery: some nanoporous carbon materials generate photocatalytic activity, in other words, when they receive sunlight this triggers chemical reactions capable of degrading other compounds. This discovery allowed Fernández to develop a doubly economical technique. On the one hand, nanoporous, photocatalytic carbon compounds are cheaper than semiconductors. On the other hand, these compounds have been perfected through engineering to allow their photocatalytic capacity to be activated through visible light.

Fernández is now working on this technology at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels (Belgium), where she aims to increase the applications of these materials: ""We are collaborating with a group from the University of Ghent (also in Belgium) on combining these carbon materials with cement"". The objective of this ongoing project is to incorporate this photoreactive capability into structures that clean the surrounding air."