Research Projects

Water is one of the natural resources that, due to its limited and variable nature, both in quantity and quality, should be protected with special intensity, in line with the Environmental Objectives that support the ecological transition: sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Studies realized in collaboration with the Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro, the urban point sources are the pressures that in most cases are the cause of non-compliance
with the environmental quality objectives established by the DMA. This non-compliance are mainly related to microbiological contamination in the receiving waters of these discharges.
Generally, as there is no legal requirement, wastewater treatment facilities do not include disinfection processes that reduce the microbiological load of effluents and, consequently, these agents are incorporated into natural waters, limiting the usemade of them, especially in supplying populations and recreational use (bathing and others). Likewise, such contamination in wastewater limits the possibility of its subsequent reuse, reducing the capacity to increase the availability of water resources. It is important to remark that, water reuse for agricultural irrigation can also contribute to circular economy by recovering nutrients from the reclaimed water and applying them to crops, by means of fertigation techniques. Thus, water reuse could potentially reduce the need for supplemental applications of mineral fertilizer.
Therefore, it is necessary to intensify the wastewater treatment efficiency by non-conventional processes that improve the treated water quality with the final objective of allowing a safe reuse of effluents, taking into account the regulation (EU) 2020/741. On the other hand, the control of more microbiological parameters is essential for a correct analysis of the technologies application. Aware of this need, the AySA group has been developing research projects for many years focus on the research about conventional and non-conventional processes, based on photocatalytic processes, applied for disinfection waters and about the microbiological control in urban wastewater treatment plants. The main objective of this project is to select the best technology for disinfection of treated urban wastewater for full-scale application by the improvement of previously studied advanced oxidation processes in the disinfection of these type of waters. Furthermore, the microbiological control, not only by bacterial indicators conventionally used but also protozoa and endosymbiotic bacteria that are inside amoebae, is consider very relevant in this project since to our knowledge, there are no studies investigating such a wide range of potentially pathogenic micro-organisms. This realistic approach is expected to minimise the impact on the receiving waters and increase the possibility of reuse, reducing the the health and environmental risk.

CO2 emissions currently represent the 77% of the total greenhouse gas emissions of anthropogenic origin. It provokes a gradual increase in global warming of our planet with catastrophic environmental consequences. There is no doubt about the need to promote a transition toward an economy avoiding the intensive use of fossil fuels, i.e., using the electricity generated from renewable sources as primary source of energy, and favoring alternative and more sustainable chemical processes. The project "Development of intermittent plasmas ignited by renewable electricity for the CO2 splitting and revalorization processes", RENOVACO2, aims at developing atmospheric plasma technologies that use electricity as a direct energy vector to induce chemical processes that are currently carried out through catalytic techniques (i.e., at high pressures and temperatures, using harmful and non-recyclable catalysts). RENOVACO2 is a multidisciplinary project that pursuits the development of novel physical processes for the elimination and revalorization of CO2, especially designed and optimized for their activation by means of renovably energy sources. The proposed technology consist of using atmospheric pressure plasmas to induce chemical reactions in non-equilibrium conditions at atmospheric pressure and in a distributed way.

The Solar Energy Challenge. Throughout history, the most significant improvements in humanity have been linked to the industrial revolution (IR). Nowadays, we are immersed in the 4th IR “The digitally disruptive era” where Europe is on a transition towards climate neutrality and digital leadership.1 Industry 5.0 aims to position research and innovation to the service of the transition to a sustainable, human-centric, and resilient European industry.2 Solar chemical technologies will radically alter the existing models of industrial production and energy transformation and storage. However, the needed scale is in sight but not yet reached due to the lack of available highly performance and low-cost technologies. SolarChem 5.0 aims to contribute to the 5th IR, laying the foundation basis of the synergy between ecological and digital transition in the framework of Solar Chemistry through: “The development of an innovative Digital Solar Chemistry technology, to convert Earth-abundant resources and pollutants into fuels and chemicals, filling the gap between sustainable and scalable solar-driven technologies”

To achieve this ambitious objective and taking into account the complexity and the project duration our strategy is based on the design of an interdisciplinary consortium formed by four subprojects (SP) that include leading research groups in complementary disciplines such as: Chemistry, Material Science, Bio-catalysis, Photoelectrochemistry, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Solar Technologies and Advanced Characterization. Each SP incorporates a multidisciplinary crew composed by more than one research team from different research institutions, universities, and/or singular facilities.

This subproject dedicated to photoreactors (SP3) will be concentrated in the conceptual design and development of a Solar photoelectrochemical (PEC) reactor for the selection of the most suitable configuration for the reaction and the operation of the solar collector. The research activities of this SP3 will be developed in WP5 and managed by researchers from two different institutions: PSA-CIEMAT (leader of SP3) and ICMSE-CSIC. The “Plataforma Solar de Almería” (PSA) is a European Large Scientific Installation and a Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructure of Spain (ICTS) with a vast background in the design, construction, and implementation of solar reactors for photochemical reactions, together with outstanding installations. The PSA-CIEMAT team also has extensive experience in the use of ray tracing programs such as TONATIUH and SOLTRACE for the opto-energetic characterization of concentrating solar power systems. Likewise, a set of self-developed solar thermal simulation tools validated in the different low and medium-temperature solar pilot plants available at PSA. In addition, ICMSE-CSIC team will participate in the development of the PEC Cell and the electrode integration.

Siguiendo las indicaciones de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas (UNSDG), es obligatorio tomar acción al respecto buscando alternativas de energía limpia y asequible (objetivo 7) para favorecer ciudades y comunidades sostenibles (objetivo 11) mientras se mitiga el cambio climático. cambio (objetivo 13). De hecho, Horizon Europe da prioridad a las tecnologías bajas y cero emisiones de carbono como objetivos clave para la próxima generación de Europa. Sobre la base de estas premisas, la biomasa, y en particular los residuos de biomasa, representan un prometedor sustituto de los combustibles fósiles y una excelente materia prima para la fabricación de combustibles bajos en carbono. Durante su breve ciclo de vida, todo el carbono de la biomasa proviene de la atmósfera y el suelo y se libera al medio ambiente cuando se quema. Por lo tanto, la biomasa se considera un combustible neutro en carbono. Además, los combustibles derivados de biomasa son hidrocarburos de alta densidad energética que son ideales para vehículos de aviación, marítimos y pesados, a diferencia de las baterías y los dispositivos electroquímicos, que son adecuados para aplicaciones más ligeras y, por lo tanto, complementarios de los biocombustibles. En pocas palabras, no podemos hacer volar un avión con baterías durante largas distancias, pero podemos alimentarlo con biocombustibles sostenibles. Por lo tanto, los biocombustibles de biomasa están destinados a desempeñar un papel clave en la descarbonización del sector del transporte. Además, ofrecer una segunda vida a los biorresiduos es crucial para algunas comunidades (es decir, la agricultura y el sector agrícola) cuyos horizontes de mercado pueden expandirse convirtiendo un "residuo" problemático en "precursores de biocombustibles" rentables. En este sentido, SMART-FTS trae conceptos disruptivos sobre la producción de biocombustibles a partir de bio-syngas para impulsar la descarbonización del transporte en armonía con la estrategia de economía circular.

The overall objective of this project is the development of new contrast agents (CAs) to improve medical diagnostics using two advanced imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and persistent luminescence (PersL) imaging. Specifically, it is planned to develop dual MRI (T1-T2) CAs and PersL bioprobes. The advantage of dual MRI CAs over classical MRI CAs is that they allow two types of resonance images (T1-and T2 weighted images) to be obtained with a single agent. Obtaining both images is very useful as it allows avoiding false positives by cross-validation of both images. On the other hand, the use of probes with PersL significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the luminescence image since, by irradiating the probe outside the organism, autofluorescence of the tissues is avoided. An additional advantage of this type of luminescent probes is that they avoid direct irradiation of living tissues with harmful ultraviolet light. Both types of CAs (MRI and PersL CAs) will consist of uniform nanoparticles (NPs) based on various carefully selected inorganic matrices containing lanthanide ions, whose excellent magnetic and luminescent properties make them ideal candidates for the pursued applications. For MRI CAs, two types of architectures will be addressed, consisting of single-phase nanoparticles (NPs), where the T2 (Dy3+) and T1 (Gd3+ or Mn2+) active cations are in solid solution, and NPs with core-shell architecture, where the T2 ions will be located in the core while the active ions for T1 imaging will be located in the shell. In both cases, phosphate, vanadate and molybdate matrices will be tested, which have been shown to be suitable in the case of T1 or T2 single MRI CAs. In the case of PersL probes, several compounds that have shown excellent luminescence properties in terms of both intensity and persistence duration as bulk materials, will be synthesized as uniform NPs. Specifically, various germanate and gallate matrices doped with lanthanide ions (Pr3+, Yb3+), that emit infrared light within the biological windows, where the radiation is not absorbed by biological tissues or fluids thus improving the penetration depth, will be addressed. Both types of CAs (MRI and PersL CAs) will be submitted to functionalization and bioconjugation processes to provide them with colloidal stability and tumor-specific recognition capabilities. Their biocompatibility will also be tested by studying their cytotoxicity in specific cell lines. Finally, the optimal probes obtained will be applied to MRI and PersL imaging, both in vitro and in vivo, using mice as a model. The research team has extensive experience in the synthesis of lanthanide-based inorganic NPs and has most of the necessary means for their morphological, structural and chemical characterization, as well as for the study of their luminescent properties. In addition, this team has the support of researchers from other institutions who will collaborate in the development of some of the tasks, mainly with regard to bioconjugation, biocompatibility and image recording studies, which guarantees the correct development of the project.

Water resources, global warming and the decline of fossil fuels are three of the main challenges that we as a society will have to address in the next decade. Solutions to these challenges rely on the development of new technologies that allow the efficient use and reuse of water resources, as well as on new, high power and high energy density storage systems to be coupled with renewable sources. These two seemingly unrelated topics currently rely on one technology: carbon adsorbents and electrodes. Both desalination and purification systems as well as supercapacitors and batteries use materials that are based on carbon, their structure modified through physical and/or chemical processes.  Biomass is a cheap, widely available precursor for carbon materials, which can be obtained by pyrolysis. Both the choice of biomass as well as the actual process will determine the final properties of the carbon electrode, which can be tailored for targeted applications.
Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging desalination technology with tunable salt removal levels, that uses a small voltage applied across two carbon electrodes to remove ions from solution by means of Electrosorption. The small amount of energy required means that such a system can be powered by a solar panel, making this technology useful in portable and deployable systems.  Supercapacitors and batteries also rely on adsorption and/or intercalation mechanisms to store electric charge, in a process that is essentially the same but with a different final target as CDI. Both technologies rely on the use of carbon electrodes, with properties and structure tailored to each of the applications.
This proposal’s main objective is to use biomass residue as a precursor to develop tailored carbon electrodes for electrochemical applications related to energy and environmental technologies, with a focus on two main applications: energy storage in supercapacitor systems and batteries, and desalination via CDI. The main proposed synthesis approach for this electrodes will be the pyrolysis of biomass precursors, with a focus on biomass waste products such as grain husks, peels, pits and stones and other organic waste. In the case of monolithic electrodes, wood and wood-derived fiberboards will be the main focus. Chemical methods will be developed to functionalize the resulting carbons, to improve their capacitance or ion selectivity.
We will build a CDI testing rig to determine desalination behavior, and to correlate this with microscopic information obtained from advanced techniques such as electron microscopy, total scattering diffraction experiments, nitrogen adsorption isotherm, and others. We will test the electrochemical energy storage behavior and correlate it with structural properties and processing conditions. Our goal will be to optimize carbon electrodes derived from biomass for targeted applications, and to develop a menu of biomass derived carbon materials.