The key concept of triboREMEDY project is to use mechanical energy tribolysis to face two important environmental problems. The safe and sustainable elimination of hazardous chemicals (such as persistent organic pollutants) from the environment and the inactivation of harmful microorganisms from water. The benefit of this technology is that it allows to obtain environmental remediation without releasing undesired byproducts into the environment and avoiding the use of consumables per se. The systems works on the basis of controllable parameters, adjustable according to the selected application. This novel concept is based on the use of mechanical energy to generate controlled chemical reactions and/or to inactivate microscopic biological organisms.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are extremely carcinogenic chemical compounds that were previously employed in industrial and consumer goods. The production of these compounds was prohibited all around the world through the Stockholm Convention in 2001. They were mainly utilized as dielectric and coolant fluids for electrical equipment.
It took over 10 years for the destruction of 3 million tonnes of PCB stockpiles globally. However, there are still 14 million tons of contaminated materials that need to be destructed and would take almost 60 years to eliminate all currently known PCBs stockpiles, while the country inventories are still being updated. Even though the technological advancement could increase disposal rate of these materials, the complexity of the treatment is also increasing with the time due to the type of equipment that are not yet treated. During the last years, the decontamination was mainly focused on the transformer of big size, which are relatively easier to treat because of logistic reasons. What is more complicated to treat are the transformer of small and medium size, which should represent indicatively the 40% of the total volume of contaminated substances. Another factor that is slowing down the decontamination process is the cross contamination. A practice used in the past and still used is the refilling of new oil in contaminated equipment.
The TriboREMEDY project, developed a systems for the degradation of the PCBs and it was demontrated that it is able to generate dehalogenation reactions similar to what is needed for the decontamination of PCBs and other hazardous halogenated compounds. Due to safety reasons and international regulations about the displacement and handling chemical hazardous substances it was not possible to work with real PCBs contaminated samples. The efficiency of the developed system was demonstrated by using dichlorotoluene as model compound, showcasing the similarity of reactions with PCBs by computer modelling and GC-MS (Gas chromatography – mass spectrometry) analyses.
The potabilization of water is a complex process that requires the combination of various treatments as flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection, pH adjustment, etc. Tribolysis is suitable just to cover the part related to disinfection since it can inactivate the microorganisms present in the water. While the total water and wastewater treatment market size was over 280 billion of dollars in 2021 , the part related to the disinfection of the water was valued in 27.4 billion of dollars in 2020 .
Furthermore, the developed triboprocessor was tested on the inactivation of harmful microorganisms from potable water, achieving the goal of reaching 3,5 log inactivation efficiency with 170 ml/min flow in the case of vegetative B. subtilis in Ringer 1:40 matrix. This inactivation level is comparable to what obtained with technological solutions currently employed in water treatment plants.
