UPWATER

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

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/

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

Funding: European Project

https://natureproject.eu/

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/

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

Funding: European Project

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

PMOC-SUB

Presencia e impacto de contaminantes orgánicos persistentes y móviles en aguas subterráneas

Los medios acuáticos se enriquecen progresivamente en PMOCs. Entre los diferentes grupos de PMOCs, hay algunos que exhiben toxicidad (PMT), y su liberación pone en riesgo la calidad de los recursos hídricos y limita sus usos. Consecuentemente, es fundamental investigar su presencia y comportamiento en los medios acuáticos. Sin embargo, los PMOCs son muy difíciles de analizar en agua debido a su elevada polaridad, en consecuencia, hay muy poca información disponible. En la actualidad, hay más de 1800 substancias de uso frecuente que se engloban como PMOCs. Entre los que hay que destacar las substancias per y polifluoradas emergentes; aditivos plásticos utilizados en procesos de polimerización; compuestos farmacéuticos; adhesivos, selladores y productos de revestimiento; compuestos utilizados en tratamientos de agua y polímeros solubles en agua. Además, algunos productos de degradación también son PMOCs, por lo que el número de sustancias que alcanzan el medio acuático es mucho mayor.

Sinergia Project 2022

Start Date: 01/01/2021 – End Date: 31/12/2022

Project Leader: Marinella Farré Urgell , Estanislao Pujades Garnes

Funding: National Project

A new upscaling approach for multiphase flow, mechanical deformation, and hydrodynamic transport in permeable media

The main objective of the project is to uncover and quantify the mechanisms and laws that govern multiphase flow, mechanical deformation and hydrodynamic transport in permeable media, from the pore to the regional scales. To achieve this goal, HydroPore proposes a multidisciplinary and integrated research strategy that combines a new theoretical upscaling framework with novel experimental protocols and cutting-edge numerical simulation techniques

Start Date: 01/06/2020 – End Date: 31/05/2023

Project Leader: Marco Dentz , Juan José Hidalgo González

Researchers: Mamta Jotkar

Funding: National Project

http://hydropore.es/