POLPHARMA

POLPHARMA is an ANR project emerging from two industrial partners (SOLVAY & SUEZ) and four research institutes (BRGM, CEREGE, IEM & UPMC) that have complementary and multidisciplinary skills to reply to an emerging societal and technological problem. The consortium's fields of research are focused on the application of nanotechnology to the effluent water treatment, that combines synthsis of active phases, characterization of their reactivity, and interfacial properties, adsorption capacity, technical and economical approaches of the recycling and risk assessment). This project falls within the scope of the high-priority themes of the French National Action Plan for public health and the environment. It aims at developing innovative technological solutions that will make it possible to treat, under advantageous economic conditions, water impacted by the pharmaceutical micropollutants that are among the most resistant to conventional water treatment processes used in France and elsewhere. These contaminants pass mainly through wastewater treatment plants and health care centers (hospitals and clinics). They are among the emerging contaminants whose presence in the environment is, as yet, unregulated in Europe. The ultimate goals of the project are to produce clean water and reduce the risks associated with the discharge of drugs into the environment. Micropollutants have been chosen based on their high consumption, occurrence in the environment and behavior in a WWTP and their resistance to water treatment. In this regard, we propose to study: amoxicillin, carbamazepine, ciprofloxacin, danofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole. The originality of this project is the use of nanostructured pillared clays with various reactivity and with or without immobilized enzymes to develop an innovative and economical process that can be added to pre-existing treatment processes to remove or degrade micropollutants. The project will include five interrelated phases that will culminate in the industrial validation of the treatment process. These phases cover various scales – from the laboratory scale to that of a demonstration under semi-industrial conditions. The first task is devoted to the selection of typical effluents (urban wastewater, hospital waste, industrial waste, cattle manure) representing significant inputs into the environment of the five drugs selected by the consortium, for further evaluation of innovative treatment processes. In order to determine the ability of the nanostructured materials and immobilized enzymes to remove both high and low drugs levels, a drinking water resource will also be selected. Task 2 will be devoted to the synthesis and characterization of nano-structured active phases. They will be obtained by bridging montmorillonite by nanoparticles that act as pillars. Various particles of different size and reactivity will be used in order to produce nanostructured pillared-clay with varying porosity and intrinsic reactivity to optimize the sorption of the organic pollutants. These supports will also be used for the enzyme grafting in task 3 as well as membranes. After defining the most appropriate enzymes and method of immobilization of these enzymes, the enzymatic activity and influence of the reaction parameters will be studied in task 3. In task 4, work will focus on i) optimizing the capture of pharmaceutical micropollutants with raw or functionalized pillared-clays based on the physicochemical and hydrodynamic conditions of the environment and ii) the development of specific solid / liquid separation processes to the newly formed products. A demonstration semi-pilot scale will be carried out to define a part of an industrial processing scheme and secondly, to conduct a technical and economic study. Task 5 aims at developing recycling strategy for both membranes and PILCs as well as a evaluating the risk associated with the use of pillared-clays.