Litoclean participates in several international bioremediation events

Natàlia Blázquez Pallí gave a presentation at Bioremid 2023 and was present at the workshop that brought together various EU-funded projects.

From Wednesday 28th to Friday 30th June, the campus of the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) in Muttenz (Switzerland) gathered experts in bioremediation processes and soil and groundwater restoration thanks to the organization of two international events on this technology. Litoclean, as an expert in the field, has been present in both of them.

The first event, held on Wednesday 28th, consisted of a workshop bringing together the 7 bioremediation projects funded by the European Union (MIBIREM, BIOSYSMO, SYMBIOREM, NYMPHE, ELECTRA, EiCLAR and GREENER). Both the completed projects and the recently initiated ones, which delve into the science of the microbiome, microbiology and biotechnology and cover different strategies such as electrobioremediation, phytoremediation and bioaugmentation, are expected to advance these technologies and improve their application in real cases of soil and groundwater contamination.

The third edition of the International Congress on New Strategies in Bioremediation and Restoration Processes (Bioremid 2023) was held on June 29 and 30. The aim of this congress is to connect the academic sector with the business sector, in order to share the latest advances in the fight against environmental degradation, such as techniques for the identification and monitoring of biological risks, remediation strategies for sites contaminated by substances listed as priority (metals and organic compounds) and emerging ones (plastics, microplastics, pharmaceutical compounds), or new strategies for the management of the integral water cycle and the management of biological waste.

On the same Thursday, Natàlia Blázquez Pallí, head of Litoclean’s Laboratory and Pilot Tests Department, gave an oral presentation on the case of a site contaminated by organochlorines in which laboratory and field pilot tests have been carried out to check the feasibility and efficiency of bioremediation treatments in order to design a potential remediation strategy for the site under study. To this end, molecular techniques have been used to identify, quantify and characterize the bacteria responsible for the biodegradation of chlorinated contaminants, as well as stable isotope analysis, which allow confirming the occurrence and degree/efficiency of the biodegradation processes. This work has been carried out in collaboration with the research groups BioremUAB, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and MAiMA, from the Universitat de Barcelona.

The results presented at Bioremid 2023 are part of a framework project in which the rest of the Litoclean team, formed by Pedro Yáñez, Irene Janices, Arnau Borrell, David Garriga, Marta González and Marçal Bosch, has been working for more than a year and a half and which has also included the phases of research, evaluation and understanding of the problems due to the presence of contamination by organochlorine compounds in a complex aquifer, as well as modeling and hydrogeological characterization of the aquifer.