Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GREENER (InteGRated systems for Effective ENvironmEntal Remediation)
Teaser
Agricultural, industrial, and urban activities have resulted in soils, sediments, surface water, and groundwater becoming increasingly contaminated. This results in the quality (and functionality) of these, in addition to environmental and public health concerns. Conventional...
Summary
Agricultural, industrial, and urban activities have resulted in soils, sediments, surface water, and groundwater becoming increasingly contaminated. This results in the quality (and functionality) of these, in addition to environmental and public health concerns. Conventional remediation technologies are generally energy intensive, expensive, time-consuming, and produce waste. Additional technologies such as chemical treatment may include the use of hazardous chemicals and incur large costs. The use of bioremediation in place of these technologies represents a potentially cheaper and more sustainable alternative.
The overall objectives of GREENER is to develop innovative, low-cost, efficient, and sustainable solution for effective environmental remediation. This is to be achieved by integrating several remediation strategies with bio-electrochemical technologies, which will accelerate the remediation time and produce products of interest, such as electricity and harmless metabolites of industrial interest.
Specific objectives of the project include:
1. To map, select, characterise, and assess different polluted waters and soils/sediments
2. To assess and study the microbial consortia for water and soil/sediment bioremediation and isolation of best performing species
3. To develop, improve, optimise and evaluate the effectiveness and impact of technologies for water bioremediation
4. To demonstrate hybrid bioremediation systems for the treatment of contaminated water
5. To improve, optimise and demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of biological strategies for soil bioremediation
6. To develop, optimise and demonstrate the effectiveness of a hybrid system for soil bioremediation
7. To scale-up the optimum technologies developed for water and soil bioremediation
8. To demonstrate, monitor and validate the performance of the different technologies for water and soil remediation in relevant environment
9. To demonstrate the safety & regulatory compliance, and to conduct environmental & economic sustainability assessments of the developed technologies
10. To define suitable business models for diversification, exploitable results and identify potential value chains
11. To maximise the innovation impacts of the project for contributing to the uptake of the project results for growth and jobs
Work performed
The work performed in the first reporting period included the evaluation of numerous potential contaminated soil/sediment and water sites for use in technology development, with 13 sites being chosen. The sampling and analysis of these sites are now either underway or in planning. Technology development for both soil and water bioremediation is currently underway, and information required for scaling up of these technologies is being gathered. Literature reviews for LCA, LCC,and s-LCA are being performed, in addition to initial information gathering for the regulatory, legal, and risk assessment. A website has been established for the GREENER project, social media profiles have been generated, and numerous communication and dissemination activities have been performed. Reports detailing the ethics requirements of the project and the management structure of the project have been generated; alongside monitoring of the progress of the project and management of risks and data.
Final results
As the project is only in M6, there has not been significant progress beyond the state of the art, as the initial experiments are still underway and no significant results have been generated.
The expected results and main impacts of the project are as follows:
1. Remediation of at least two toxic contaminants
2. Proof of the feasibility of scaling up the GREENER bioremediation technology for field testing, including an assessment of the related environmental benefits and risks
3. A demonstration of the beniefits of the GREENER technologies over standard physico-chemical remediation approaches, including energy efficiency
Website & more info
More info: http://www.greener-h2020.eu.