PROBLEM
Arsenic presence in surface and underground waters is well known in several key geographical areas around the world. This is a harmful situation not only for direct humans intake but also through the food chain, e.g livestock for human consume. As an example, daily intake of arsenic polluted water by cattle in Argentina is becoming of increasing concern, especially due to the important size of the livestock export market where Europe is one of main customers. Reduced amounts of arsenic are observed in natural forage or alfalfa grown without irrigation and used to feed livestock. Thereby, drinking water is considered the main source of arsenic for cattle (several studies reveal arsenic concentrations in phreatic water samples above 0.15 mg/L, the level that suggest causing chronic intoxication in cattle). Therefore, there is a risk of exposure for the human health due to the introduction of arsenic in the food chain through milk or meat in addition to water. Known figures about daily water consumption by cows are established around 70 L/day. Having in mind the usual estimates in small remote farms of 10-20 cow, and in medium farms around 100-120, that reveals the need of on-site water treatment systems able to treat at least 700-1.500 L/day and 7.000-8.400 L/ day, providing an effluent with an arsenic content below 10 ug/L. In view of arsenic toxicity and the large number of people exposed to its effects worldwide, there is a clear need for the implementation in remote exploitations of affordable and sustainable treatment methodologies to provide potable water for human beings and cattle.
AIMS
To face this problem, NANOREMOVAS pursues to develop and implement a pilot plant for the remote treatment of arsenic polluted waters based on the application of state-of-art advanced multifunctional nanostructured materials tested at the laboratory level, that overcome the limitations of some existing commercial products providing better performance in terms of adsorption capacity as well as the reagentless regeneration characteristic, large throughput yet at much lower costs. Furthermore, the implementation of such technology is being carried out through the cooperation between the industry and academia within the water treatment sector by a series of research training and career development activities together with knowledge sharing. NANOREMOVAS is establishing a lasting, international partnership for transfer of knowledge within the involved research topics as a result of the detected industrial needs, especially regarding the arsenic polluted groundwater in Argentinean, providing the appropriate transfer of knowledge in addition to an increase of skilled human resources. Besides, the research and innovation to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the developed water recycling technique, the seconded researchers are carrying out a series of tasks and outreach activities, promoting entrepreneurship culture and support of young innovative companies in order to set-up technological partnerships within the water sector. Furthermore, NANOREMOVAS represents a significant contribution to knowledge and technology transfer from the academia to the industrial sector, through well-established reputation partners as transfer hubs. NANOREMOVAS will lead to quickly creating designs and industrial equipment/processes/models for economic use out of the newest scientific results.
