What do chickens, a library, and an engineering fair have in common? Paulína Monková. It was this series of coincidences that led Paulina to investigate a phenomenon called cavitation. As part of her diploma thesis, she collaborates with the scientific team that developed the CaviPlasma technology, a device capable of purifying water from microorganisms and chemical residues.

Paulína was brought to study at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering by her love for airplanes. "I've always been interested in airplanes. Mainly the wings and phenomena such as lift and airflow," she says. She soon discovered that similar principles applied not only to air, but also to water. Today, Paulína is studying energy and thermofluid engineering, and water is at the heart of her research.

She spends a lot of time in the laboratory, where she investigates the relationship between cavitation, i.e. a sudden drop in pressure in a liquid that temporarily creates a gaseous environment, and plasma discharge, all depending on other properties such as the size of the hole in the tube and the position of the electrode. It is exactly the principle of combining cavitation and low-temperature plasma that the CaviPlasma device uses. "This invention was a bit ahead of itself. We have a ready device, but we need to better understand the principles on which it works. That's what I'm working on now," Paulina explains.

She started to work with the scientific team thanks to a series of coincidences. She saw the invention for the first time at the International Engineering Fair, where she presented student models of aircraft of the Chicken Wings team at the BUT stand. Later, while writing her bachelor's hesis in the Moravian Library, she saw an invitation to a lecture on this invention. "I went to have a look and I got very interested in it. Some time later, I registered a call on Facebook inviting students to join the research and combine work in the lab with writing a thesis, for example. I immediately contacted them and told them I was interested," she recalls.

Paulína uses laboratory equipment to measure hydraulic characteristics and look for the best combination of parameters. "I am spending a lot of time in the lab now. One of the variables is the width of the hole in the tube, for each width I have dozens of electrode positions, each of them in multiple modes, so I measure it about twenty times. I generate about 30,000 pieces of data from one measurement, which I then process into graphs," Paulína calculates, adding: "My measurement is to help with the optimization of CaviPlasma, the goal is to increase the elimination capacity, i.e. better removal of pollutants, and also to reduce energy consumption. That is why we must first analyze the operation and principle of the equipment in more detail, including the hydraulic part, in which I am involved," she explains.

Even though it is not easy to do science during her master's degree, it is clear that she enjoys her research. "I feel a great responsibility, but also a joy to be able to participate in something like this. If the invention is proven in practice to work as well as it does in the laboratory, it will be a way to remove, for example, estrogens from contraceptives or drug and pesticide residues from water, which wastewater treatment plants cannot do today," Paulína believes.