Application of biomaterials in aquatic contaminated environments

Resumo

The recovery of waste produced in various activities and allowing its return to the productive system within the goal of zero waste and as one of the maxims of the circular economy allows an improvement of both economic and environmental sustainability. These waste, both organic and inorganic, can be used for their application in environmental remediation processes. The presence of emerging pollutants in aquatic environments represents a significant problem given the pernicious effects they generate in living beings and their elimination focuses on new research for their elimination with various technologies such as adsorption and where it is required to obtain new more effective adsorbents . In this thesis project, we intend to develop new biomaterials for the treatment of aquatic environments contaminated with emerging pollutants of diverse nature. For this, it is proposed, on the one hand, to evaluate a mixture of different adsorbent biomaterials (such as agro-industrial waste) as well as the production of different carbonaceous materials obtained by various pretreatments followed by thermal treatments, which will be optimized, of these residues. The new adsorbents will be characterized and the elimination of representative compounds of contamination in polluted effluents will be investigated both individually and combined, relying on tools such as the design of experiments. The benignity of the proposed remediation strategies will be determined through toxicity analysis. The operating conditions will be optimized and the laboratory scale system will be studied both in discontinuous and continuous treatments, which will allow the simulation of the process through computer tools and facilitate its scaling.