Project description
Novel technology to rejuvenate derelict soils
Rise in temperature in the geoenvironment leads to unstable ground conditions. How this is made worse in the presence of organic matter/soils is currently poorly understood. The EU-funded BioGeoInterface project will develop a technology for sustainable geoenvironments in extreme weather, aiming to rejuvenate derelict soils by utilising native soil microorganisms and stimulating them with biowaste (for example, biosolids). Typical coarse- and fine-grained soils will be screened for native soil microbes and these will be stimulated/augmented. Subsequently, efficacy of the biomodification will be assessed according to physical and biochemical parameters related to soil and plants. Further, the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of the organic soils (such as biomodified soils) under elevated temperatures will be studied along with the development of a mathematical framework.
Objective
Climatic influences various natural phenomena and affect the overall environmental synergy. Precipitation pattern and temperature are among key phenomena that influence the soils and inturn life. Extended periods of droughts leads to loss of nutrition in soils and increases desertification of land. On the other hand, the increase in temperature (natural or anthropogenic activities) that lead to rise in temperatures in the geoenvironment will lead to unstable ground conditions. This situation is more detrimental in the presence of organic matter/organic soils and has been poorly understood. This study proposes to develop a novel technology to rejuvenate derelict soils by utilising native soil microorganisms and stimulating them with biowaste (such as biosolids), with an aim to commercialise the technology. These studies will require screening of the stimulants and the native soil microbes (consortium) that will be amended with a typical coarse-grained and fine-grained soil. Subsequently the efficacy of biomodification will be assessed based on several physical, and biochemical parameters relating to soil and plants. Further, through this proposed study a engineering behaviour of biomodified soils (organic soils) under elevated temperatures (ThermoHydroMechanical behaviour) will be carried out. This will a major step in this direction as till date the conventional practise has been to understand THM behaviour of soils without biogenic function. These efforts will be followed by developing a mathematical framework that can predict the holistic behaviour of soils under elevated temp. This study will be carried out by Dr.Shashank Bettadapura Subramanyam(ER), Prof.Xiaohui Chen(from UnivLeeds) will be the PI. This collaboration will significantly influence ER's competences in pursuing his interests and achieving career goals and enable a 2way transfer of knowledge between the ER & PI related to biogeotechnics THMbehaviour &numerical aspect in environmental geotechnics.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringgeotechnics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
LS2 9JT Leeds
United Kingdom