Dr. Robert Kalin, Civil Engineering Department, Queen's University Belfast, Irlanda.
Sala d'Actes de l'Insitut de Ciencies de la Terra "Jaume Almera", a les 12h

The development of our current societal infrastructure and standard of living has produced a legacy of land and groundwater that is contaminated with potentially harmful inorganic and organic compounds. At the turn of the new millennium much of the developed world turned its attention to 'sustainability' where emphasis is now placed on a balance between economic, social and environmental issues.
There is a variety of both in situ and ex situ treatment technologies capable of contaminant destruction by altering the chemical structure including thermal, biological and chemical treatment methods. Highly engineered treatment technologies that are commonly used for extraction and separation of contaminants from environmental media include soil treatment by thermal desorption, soil washing, solvent extraction, soil vapour extraction and ground water treatment by either phase separation, carbon adsorption, air stripping, ion exchange, or by some combination of these technologies.
Permeable reactive barriers (PRB) are a technology that is one decade old, with most full-scale applications based on abiotic mechanisms. In PRB systems contaminated groundwater passes through an in situ reactive material that either biotically or abiotically degrades the contaminants. PRBs are unique because they can be engineered to prevent contaminant movement across site boundaries before risk receptors, or simply to cut-off the source of a contaminant plume that then dissipates via natural attenuation processes.
Though there is extensive literature on engineered bioreactors, natural biodegradation potential, and in situ remediation, it is only recently that engineered passive bioreactive barrier technology is being considered at the commercial scale to manage contaminated soil and groundwater risks. Recent full-scale studies are providing the scientific confidence in our understanding of coupled microbial (and genetic), hydrogeologic, and geochemical processes in this approach and have highlighted the need to further integrate engineering and science tools.