2nd Place for MCI Team at 2026 ÖWAV Waste Management Conference

Lydia Challandes impresses with her poster on PFAS removal – research consortium takes second place at conference

With more than 500 participants, the Austrian Waste Management Conference organized by ÖWAV is the leading event in the field of circular economy and waste management. Under the theme “Future-Ready Waste Management”, Minister Norbert Totschnig welcomed experts from academia, business, industry, and public administration to the conference. The focus was on current developments, innovative technologies, and key challenges facing the industry in managing resources and waste.

The event serves as a platform for professional exchange and networking between academia and industry.

A particular success for MCI and its partners: In the poster competition, a development of materials for PFAS removal took second place. The poster, titled “Regenerable Fluorophilic Ion Exchangers for Selective PFAS Removal,” was presented by MCI young researcher Lydia Challandes on behalf of the consortium and impressed both the jury and the audience with its clear presentation of the results. The content is based on the research work of the project team; significant contributions of Judith Schobel and Johanna Freilinger deserve special mention.

PFAS are “forever chemicals” that are extremely persistent and largely harmful to health, and they represent one of the major environmental challenges of our time. This makes research in this area all the more important.

The results are part of the research projects PFASelect (funded by Interreg Bay-Aut, Project Lead MCI/Jan Back) and PFAS-Trap (funded by KPC, Project Lead ionOXess/Marco Rupprich) with the following project partners: University of Innsbruck, TU Munich, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, ionOXess GmbH, SFC Umwelttechnik GmbH, Waterplus Technik GmbH.