Project description

The major goal of CIES is the development of a photocatalytic conversion process to valorize both the liquid and gaseous effluents from a membrane bioreactor (MBR). This project encompasses the synthesis and improvement of photocatalysts, their application in a wastewater treatment system as well as the evaluation of environmental and circular indicators. Is expected that CIES technologies accomplish a decrease of impacts and emissions leading to a more energy and resource efficient process, thus providing process routes that enable the transition to more sustainable wastewater treatment systems.

This project aims to extend previous research developed by BioGroup and NanoMag groups on the removal of emerging contaminants using innovative photocatalytic reactors. The proposal encompasses an improvement of the technologies already investigated and developed in previous projects of these research groups: HP-NANOBIO and SPOTLIGHT. The overall process to be developed comprise two different phases: one referring to the gaseous and the other to the liquid stream. In the case of gaseous effluent, CO and CO₂ will be transformed to bio-methane through photocatalytic hydrogenation, hence upgrading the biogas quality. On the other hand, the liquid effluents containing emerging pollutants not removed in previous steps will be treated also in a heterogeneous solid-liquid photocatalytic reactor, obtaining a higher quality effluent. Both for liquid and gas streams, the advance on semiconductor catalysis will be done using atomic quantum clusters (AQCs) for the enhancement of their photocatalytic properties.