Pilot project begins research at an oil storage facility
Litoclean, as a partner of the Phy2Climate project, promoted by the European Commission, is actively participating in the different pilot tests that are being developed to recover contaminated land through phytoremediation. One of the five sites chosen for field work is an oil storage facility in Tarragona, a soil contaminated mainly by hydrocarbons.
Litoclean’s extensive knowledge of soil decontamination and its firm commitment to R&D&I have made it the company responsible for managing and characterizing the pilot plot on industrial land. Likewise, another of its tasks is to prepare the site where the field trials with plants will be carried out and to lead their monitoring, acting as a liaison between the industrial partner and the research team. At present, the first laboratory tests have already begun and the field tests are scheduled to start in October. In this phase, which is expected to have three harvests and, therefore, a duration of about 3 years, Litoclean will maintain and collect the plant material produced so that it can be treated in future phases of the research.
Phy2Climate is a multidisciplinary project within the framework of the European Union’s H2020 strategy. Its objective is to decontaminate soils through phytoremediation, a technique that uses the capacity of some plants to absorb pollutants, in addition to taking advantage of the crops to produce biofuel. Litoclean, one of the 17 partners involved in the project, has been actively involved in the selection of the four plant species used for phytoremediation, as well as in the selection of soil analysis parameters and in the interpretation of the results, both analytical and plant development.