Just before the summer break, my first master’s student Sven Hazenoot defended his thesis, “Design and modelling of a flow cell reactor comprising a boron-doped diamond anode for electrochemical PFAS degradation”, and graduated from TU Delft.

Sven spent the past months designing, building and testing a small flow cell reactor with a boron-doped diamond anode for breaking down PFAS. He combined CFD modelling with lab experiments to see how flow rate and electrode spacing affect degradation.

It was great to co-supervise Sven together with Ivan Buijnsters. This was my first time supervising a master’s student, and it was a valuable learning experience for me too. Through our weekly meetings and the practical work in the lab, I learned how to guide a student from a research question to a working experimental setup, and how to give feedback that helps them build independence. Working through the design iterations with Sven, including problems such as leakage and corrosion, showed me how much can be learned from practical challenges.

His work fits well with my research in the NANAQUA project, where I’m working on electrochemical oxidation for PFAS destruction. Sven’s flow cell and CFD models give us a solid starting point for designing and improving reactors for these compounds, and his setup will be used in our next projects.