Prevenir a propagação ambiental de contaminantes emergentes utilizando estratégias híbridas para potenciar o tratamento de águas residuais urbanas

Water is vital for sustaining life and thus its preservation is a top priority. WWTPs are crucial for restoring water to nature, underscoring the critical importance of their efficiency in removing pollutants. Currently, the European Union's policies are even more centred on safeguarding water resources, particularly regarding micropollutants pollution, and thus WWTPs will be forced to enhance their effluents quality. The AGS technology is one of the currently available biological systems for treating wastewater. It has been adopted worldwide and the possibility of retrofitting the existing activated sludge tanks into AGS ones potentiates its adoption [7]. One of the AGS technology key features is its reliable and consistent nutrient removing performance, even under stressful scenarios which allows to produce high-quality effluents that meet the regulatory discharge standards. Nevertheless, as for conventional WWTP, the AGS capability for removing micropollutants is often limited, and with the EU tightening regulations governing wastewater discharge quality, further enhancements of wastewater treatment in general, and for improving AGS performance for micropollutants removal, in particular, are needed. AStUTe is committed to improve AGS wastewater treatment efficiency, proposing hybrid approaches for minimizing the release of micropollutants, making use of waste-derived materials for developing such approaches. The growing number of AGS plants worldwide, with 2 full-scale AGS plants in Portugal, and the necessity of waste reduction through its reuse in valorisation schemes justify the project relevance. The AStUTe specific objectives are: 1. To ascertain on the capability of multi-specialized CECs-degrading granules to concomitantly degrade the target micropollutants 2. To evaluate the cell viability, metabolic activity, and structural integrity of the develop granules over extended periods to assess the shelf-life potential 3. To investigate the potential of the bioaugmentation process to boost the simultaneous biodegradation of target micropollutants in an AGS prototype 4. To explore the viability of using different waste-derived sorbent materials for the removal of micropollutants co-existing in treated wastewater 5. To investigate the effectiveness of adsorption-based units coupled to AGS units in improving the overall removal of micropollutants from wastewater Bioaugmentation is a promising strategy to improve AGS performance but, especially in what concerns to multi-microorganisms-immobilized based processes, more research is needed to strengthen its position as a leading solution for WWTPs. Is crucial to get knowledge on the synergistic interactions among immobilized microorganisms and among them with the native microbiota in the AGS systems as well as on the viability and metabolic activity of immobilized cells under relevant environmental conditions. In what concerns the envisaged adsorption-based units made of waste-derived sorbents, further knowledge on the removal efficiency in real environmental conditions, regeneration and reusability is needed and has not been properly tackled. The multidisciplinary and complementary expertise of the team partners, along with the collaboration of the industrial stakeholder and the project consultant will be an asset to ensure that research outcomes are relevant, practical, and impactful.