KARST: Predicting flow and transport in complex Karst systems

Karst aquifers are a treasure and a threat: while up to 25% of the world population depends on them for drinking water, they also have capabilities for extremely fast conduction of water and contaminants. In the light of climate change, we need to prepare for extreme flooding and understand the consequences for karst aquifers. Despite their socio-economic importance, decades of research, and high-profile disasters, karst structures and processes remain notoriously difficult to assess. Because of the complexity of karst and its lack of accessibility, the foundations of flow and transport modeling in karst systems are weak. Key phenomena related to extreme events such as flash floods and heavy tails in tracer recovery are still beyond current modeling capabilities.

KARST will establish the next generation of coupled stochastic modeling frameworks to predict karst processes, assess the vulnerability of karst aquifers, and forecast their response to extreme events. Our approach will bridge structures and processes on all scales, far beyond the capabilities of current theories and computer simulations. This will be achieved by targeting three key objec- tives: (i) Identification and quantification of flow and transport dynamics at the conduit scale. (ii) Characterization and modeling of karst network structure at the catchment scale. (iii) Derivation of a new upscaled approach to predict karst processes at different resolution scales. Together, this will result in an unprecedented multiscale modeling framework for the prediction of flow and transport in karst.

Funding: European Union, ERC Synergy Grants 2022 - Ref.: 101071836

IDAEA-CSIC (Spain): Marco Dentz (corresponding PI)
IFPEN (France): Benoit Noetinger (PI)
University of Neuchatel: (Switzerland): Philippe Renard (PI)
University of Ljubljana (Slowenia): Bojan Mohar (PI)

Partners:
INRIA (France): Sylvain Lefebvre
University (Canada): Simon Frazer

Start Date: 01/05/2023 – End Date: 30/04/2029

Project Leader: Marco Dentz

Researchers: Juan José Hidalgo González

Funding: European Project

https://erc-karst.eu/

UPWATER

Understanding groundwater Pollution to protect and enhance WATERquality

Groundwater plays a key role in providing water supplies and livelihoods to respond the pronounced water scarcity. Groundwater pollution is a widespread worldwide problem. The scientific and technological goals of the UPWATER project are:
-To provide scientific knowledge on identification, occurrence and fate of pollutants in the groundwater with cost-efficient sampling methods based on passive samplers.
-To develop sources apportionment methods to identify and quantify the pollution sources.
-To validate and assess the performance of bio-based engineered natural treatment systems designed as mitigation solutions.
The monitoring and mitigation solutions will be validated in 3 case studies (Denmark, Greece and Spain), representing different climate conditions and a combination of rural, industrial and urban pollution sources. Expected outcomes include amongst others updating the EU chemical priority lists, scaling-up the pilot bio-based solutions to demonstration scale, the adoption of some preventive measures in the case studies and the close-to-market development of the passive sampling devices.

Start Date: 01/11/2022 – End Date: 30/11/2024

Project Leader: Enric Vázquez Suñé

Researchers: Sandra Pérez Solsona , Víctor Matamoros Mercadal , Sergi Díez Salvador , Sílvia Lacorte Bruguera , Eike Marie Thaysen

Funding: European Project

Hydrochemical coupled processes affecting contaminants of emerging concern in urban groundwater

Freshwater resources are suffering increasing pressure in urban areas due to several factors, such as growing population and climate change. Urban aquifers are an alternative to obtain freshwater, but they are commonly polluted by contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) (pharmaceuticals, personal care products, etc.). The research challenge that this research will answer is: Are CECs a water management challenge as they might limit the use of groundwater as safe drinking-water in urban areas? To answer this question, the understanding of the behaviour of CECs in groundwater at field scale is required. CECs’ behaviour is controlled by occurrence of the coupled hydro-chemical processes in the subsurface; which has been mainly studied at laboratory scale, missing the complex hydrochemical conditions inherent to urban aquifers. In groundwater, the attenuation of CECs seems to occur mainly through microbial degradation, because adsorption is reversible and only retards their transport. Biodegradation of some CECs is a redox-dependent process; however, the redox state of urban groundwater is not described in many CECs field-scale investigations.
The aim of this project is: the quantification of the hydrochemical processes affecting CECs in urban aquifers at field scale paying special attention to redox conditions. The study of these coupled processes is necessary for a sustainable management of groundwater in urban areas. This project will open new research avenues and will significantly advance on the state-of-art of this relevant topic, which will be transferable to worldwide urban areas suffering from water scarcity.

Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and CSIC

Start Date: 05/08/2022 – End Date: 04/08/2024

Project Leader: Anna Jurado Elices

Researchers: Olha Nikolenko

Funding: National Project

Sincrourban

Dinámica de contaminantes inorgánicos emergentes en suelos urbanos y rizosfera: interacciones y especiación sólida mediante técnicas de sincrotrón

Mejorar nuestro conocimiento mecanístico sobre los procesos bióticos y abióticos y las transformaciones que Pt, Pd, Rh, Sb y Ce sufren en suelos urbanos y en la interfase suelo-agua (rizosfera), la cinética de estas transformaciones y las implicaciones que esto tiene en términos de bio-disponibilidad y captación por parte de cultivos urbanos.

Sinergia Project 2023

Start Date: 15/07/2022 – End Date: 14/07/2023

Project Leader: Sergio Carrero Romero , Sergi Díez Salvador

Funding: National Project

Verbena

NueVos sistEmas de humedales construidos basados en pRocesos Bioelectroquímicos para rEducir la coNtaminación de Aguas superficiales y subterráneas

En la actualidad los humedales construidos utilizados en el tratamiento de aguas se basan en materiales inertes, el uso de materiales electroconductores para incrementar la eliminación de nutrientes como el amonio y emergentes ayudará a mejorar la calidad del agua tratada. No existen estudios sobre el uso de humedales bioelectroquímicos con coque o grafito para atenuar contaminantes emergentes. La aplicación de modelos y trazadores a los resultados experimentales servirá para el escalado de la tecnología.

Sinergia Project 2023

Start Date: 15/07/2022 – End Date: 14/07/2023

Project Leader: Laura Scheiber Pagès , Víctor Matamoros Mercadal

Funding: National Project

GW_CPS

Development and deployment of new Ceramic Passive Samplers for the monitoring of contaminants in groundwater

Passive sampling for the monitoring of contaminants in water has emerged as a new technique for time-integrated measurements. In 2015, we developed a ceramic passive sampler (CPS) which has proved efficient to determine organic contaminants in water. Within the frame of GW_CPS, we aim to recover the knowledge and methodology acquired for the abandoned patent to patent the new improved device, scale-up and produce various passive samplers of different dimensions and porosity to be applied for different types of water and during different periods of time. The passive sampler to be designed consists in a porous ceramic tube (with caps) where a polymeric sorbent is placed in the inner side to preconcentrate the analytes.

Sinergia-Innovación Project 2023

Start Date: 15/07/2022 – End Date: 14/07/2023

Project Leader: Sílvia Lacorte Bruguera , Enric Vázquez Suñé

Funding: National Project

Experimental and numerical study of geologic carbon storage

EASY GEO-CARBON proposes an integrated experimental-modeling workflow to ‎substantially improve the knowledge of CO2 interactions with rocks and their potential impacts on ‎short- and long-term response of the subsurface to CO2 storage. To achieve this goal, we will inject CO2 into reservoir rock samples in the laboratory under representative underground conditions to reach an in-depth understanding and develop a mathematical formulation of coupled Hydraulic-Mechanical-Chemical (HMC) processes that occur in rock as a result of CO2 injection. We will incorporate the model into an open-access numerical code and validate it by reproducing laboratory observations. We will finally use this numerical tool to simulate megatonne-scale CO2 injection at two sites. The developed knowledge of coupled HMC processes in rock during CO2 injection puts more reliable constraints ‎on reservoir injectivity and storage capacity‎ and provides a more realistic understanding of the risks associated with induced seismicity and CO2 leakage towards the surface, two obstacles that in part fed into delays in widespread deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage in deep geological formations, also referred to as geologic carbon storage. Thus, the successful development of EASY GEO-CARBON will pave the way for optimized ‎geologic carbon storage and its rapid and vast scale-up.

Funding: MCIN/AEI/‎‎10.13039/501100011033 and the ‎European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR in the framework of International Collaboration Projects- MSCA IF-ST 2020 under grant agreement number PCI2021-122077-2B

Start Date: 01/05/2022 – End Date: 30/04/2024

Project Leader: Iman Rahimzadeh Kivi

Researchers: Víctor Vilarrasa Riaño

Funding: European Project, National Project

https://easygeocarbon.com/

Analysis and risk mitigation measures for induced seismicity in supercritical geothermal systems

Predicting earthquakes caused by deep fluid injection for geothermal energy production:
We need a combination of multiple solutions for reaching carbon neutrality to mitigate climate change. An innovative one is to combine carbon capture and storage (CCS) and exploitation of supercritical geothermal systems (SCGS) in volcanic areas. One hurdle of this promising geo-energy is the seismic risk resulting from deep fluid injection. Assessing its seismic hazard is challenging due to the complexity of the problem. This is why the EU-funded ARMISTICE project will couple CO2 flow models with high-temperature rheology of rock and faults. It will also extend current models of subsurface CO2 and water flow to very high temperatures, above 375 ºC. Ultimately, it will determine the potential for induced seismicity in CCS-SCGS and the conditions for safe exploitation.
European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action ARMISTICE with grant agreement No. 882733

Start Date: 01/09/2021 – End Date: 31/08/2023

Project Leader: Francesco Parisio , Víctor Vilarrasa Riaño

Funding: European Project

https://armistice-energy.eu/

Nature-based solutions to reduce antibiotics, pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance in aquatic ecosystems

An array of nature-based solutions including conventional and high-end constructed wetlands, river re-naturalization, and restoration of wetlands will cover the continuum from urban sources to coastal biota in estuaries. We propose a comprehensive quantification of the fate of antibiotics, pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance in these systems together with ecotoxicological and human health assessments. Nature-based solutions performance will be analyzed using multivariate modeling techniques to identify parameters with the greatest empirical influence on the attenuation of targeted pollutants.

Start Date: 01/09/2021 – End Date: 30/08/2024

Project Leader: Víctor Matamoros Mercadal

Researchers: Josep Maria Bayona Termens , Mònica Escolà Casas , Enric Vázquez Suñé

Support: Yolanda Rodríguez Espelta

Funding: European Project

https://natureproject.eu/

European training network on control prediction and learning in mixing processes

The CoPeRMix network brings together a collection of experts at the European scale from academia and industry, who have all adopted new angles of attack to the problem of mixing according to their needs and fields of application, in order to foster the emergence of a unified viewpoint, through intensive collaboration between different schools of thought and methods. This effort builds up on existing collaborations between several participants, and lectures or courses delivered by some of us in various university curricula in their own institution, and abroad. More precisely, this training network is the emanation of the “Mixing Days” organized by the consortium on a yearly basis (Marseille in 2016, Rennes in 2017, Barcelona in 2018 and Brussels in 2019), which have been the opportunity to conceive and share a new methodology: the lamellar description of mixing.
It consists in viewing a mixture as a set of elongated lamellae and sheets and understanding how they are stretched and dispersed by the stirring flow. This first step provides the necessary information to address the stirring/molecular diffusion coupling, leading to the complete statistical description of the mixing process i.e. the full concentration distribution. This disruptive vision has prompted new numerical (Diffusive Strip Method) and experimental methods. They offer an unprecedented opportunity of accurately describe Stirring protocols which is the ground to understanding and model- ling Mixing and its Impact in a diversity of fields. This lamellar description of mixing provides a consistent and invertible theoretical framework giving us also the opportunity to Learn from mixed scalar fields.

Very promising outcomes are expected as the CoPerMix programme unites leading academic and industrial partners with a broad expertise in the fundamentals and applications of mixing in a very wide range of fields.

Start Date: 01/01/2021 – End Date: 31/12/2025

Project Leader: Marco Dentz , Juan José Hidalgo González

Support: Francesco Leone

Funding: European Project

https://www.copermix-itn.eu/