Research EnVOC
Our research activities deal with environmental issues related to organic micropollutants. We focus on two sub-disciplines:
Environmental analysis
Our group studies the environmental analysis, occurrence, fate and behaviour of organic micro-pollutants. We have built up experience with respect to:
- analysis of both anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
- analysis of emerging contaminants like pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon deduced organics sorbed on atmospheric particulate matter
- odour measurement (sniffing teams, olfactometry)
Particular points of study are:
- the physical-chemical behaviour and partitioning of organic micropollutants in/between the different environmental matrices (air, water, soil, sediment, biota)
- the inventarisation of their main emission sources (both anthropogenic and biogenic)
- their spatial-temporal occurrence
- their potential effects on ecosystems and human health
We focus on both fundamental aspects (e.g. relationships between thermodynamics and chromatographic retention) and applied aspects (evaluation/optimization of the performance characteristics of new methods/ techniques, quality control,…).
EnVOC deals with this challenging field of research through the development and optimization of advanced analytical methods including sampling and sample preparation, chromatographic separation and mainly mass spectrometric detection.
Environmental technology
This discipline is about innovative biological and physical-chemical end-of-pipe technologies to abate organic chemical pollution in mainly waste gases and wastewaters.
Specific research issues on biological waste gas purification deal with:
- mesophilic and thermophilic biofiltration and biotrickling filtration for the removal of odorous and harmful VOCs
- the physical transport and biodegradation of hydrophobic contaminants in innovative membrane biofilters
With respect to physical-chemical technologies, particularly advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) like:
- ozonation
- the ultrasound and the peroxone process (H2O2/O3)
- TiO2 mediated heterogeneous photocatalysis and plasmacatalysis
are investigated to degrade both volatile organic compounds and emerging contaminants in both water and gas phase.
Attention is paid to the different aspects of the biological and advanced oxidation processes:
- partitioning and mass transfer mechanisms
- identification of intermediates and reaction pathways
- effect of process parameters on degradation kinetics
- reactor optimization
And we use obtained experimental data as an input to develop and validate modelling approaches.