Kavitha Karanam

I completed my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 2015 from Rajiv Gandhi University, India. Later I worked for 3.5 years as an automation-design engineer in Polmon industrial instrumentation and automation solutions company, India.

I joined UQ as a research assistant in the School of Chemical Engineering department under Dr Pradeep Shukla for working on the removal of PFAS using foam fractionation technology. During this period, I applied for a higher degree research program in QAEHS and joined in January 2021 as a PhD student. The main objective of my research focuses on showing how wastewater treatment plants are acting as sources for microplastics into aquatic systems, their behavior during the treatment process and using column foam fractionation technique for the removal. Quantification of microplastics in wastewater samples and studying column foam fractionation efficiency in treatment are key to my research. Particle-bubble interaction in the liquid phase, particle size distribution and bubble characteristics are among research goals. Also, I am interested in performing computational modelling operations on the fractionation column and correlating this with experimental results.