Posts tagged "eau"

Context Presentation

This project is built in cooperation with Epurtek factory and INRAe who displays planted filters in Occitany, France and other countries. The actual network extends with the help of the regional GIS ‘EAU Toulouse and the national group of water Re-Use from Aqua-Valley and CapEnergy platforms. Major research and innovation issues are: 

1. To obtain and feed a pluri-topic data base from environmental sensors settled down into the filters for in-field, providing a spatially and temporally improved datasets that allows the implementation of deterministic models and open the black boxes of the filters sediment and soil. These models of transport and reaction (ex MIN3P) will describe the water and pollutants flows through the filters. This task started from cooperation between the research labs (UMR ECOLAB) at Toulouse, the university of La Rochelle, and UMR ECO&SOL from Montpellier.

 2. To demonstrate how the invertebrate addition in the filters will improve the purification efficiency in agreement with the biodiversity influence that governs natural ecosystem functioning. Research hypotheses will be tested in filter replicates at the level of lab microcosms, in campus pilots and across-campus comparisons.

 3. The assessment of biodiversity effects on filter benefits and services in terms of water quality providing, water quantity resource management, energy cost, recreational area for campus users, teaching and innovation supports.

 4. To provide a new generation filter that matches with the requirement of the recent European policies about water reuse quality and may be recognized as a new technology for local water cycle in our territories

Keywords

Planted Filter, Water, Biodiversity

Scientific goals

This garden provides the potential to become an outdoor living lab as a demonstrator of sustainable and low carbon solution for wastewater treatment and recycling though nature-based solution. The main challenge is to demonstrate the advantages of having a biodiverse and smart clean garden on a campus or a smart city, in terms of environment, economy, society (quality of life) and energy, by comparison with the classic filters. This implies an adaptative management of the water resource in cooperation with other research laboratories and stakeholders, as public water managers and private factories that wish to favor the ecological and energetic transition in this field.

Contacts

magali.gerino_at_univ-tlse3.fr, oceane.gilibert_at_univ-tlse3.fr, rahim.kacimi_at_irit.fr, arnaud.elger_at_univ-tlse3.fr

LEFE, SGE, IRIT, Toulouse University / IMFT, La Rochelle University / PME Epurteck

Keywords

Living Lab, water, filter, biodiversity, tomography

A Water oriented Living lab on the campus gets applied and fundamental research components with the main goal to reduce the surface area of the “regular” planted filters by making them more performing toward filtration with the involvement of an increased biodiversity. This demonstrator makes part of the LL implementation in the Interreg SUDOE Tr@nsnet Project. A cooperation between UT3 Direction du Patrimoine, SGE, UMR IRIT, UMR IMFT, U La Rochelle, PME Epurteck will lead to a bioinpired filter located next to IRIT to treat waste water of the A1 building. This biotech with enhanced biodiversity and soil metabolism for organic mater biodegradation, will increase the green area of the campus, will help at the air temperature regulation , and prevent of any smelt and musquitos for the neighbourhood. The earth worms (are ecological engineers that dig biostructure networks in the soil, that may largely influence the water parameters when flowing through this soil. The current tested research hypotheses is: « how does a burrow network buried in the macroporous substrates of soils influence the water infiltration capacities ? » This is run through the cooperation between research group in Physic “MacroPorous media and Biology” of UMR IMFT and the FERMAT X-ray tomography for images of 3D gallery networks of worms burrow, and modeling of water infiltration water flux in porous media; and the ecological team Bioref (Biodiversity, biological networks and Fluxes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems) of UMR Laboratory of Functional Ecology and Environment

Constant-head permeameter                               

Burrow network dig by one worm after 1 weak

Scientific goals

Create a demonstration of the biodiversity (earth worms) influence on the water infiltration in the planted filter.

Use the water oriented living lab connected with a serie of IoT sensors to explore further research hypotheses about organic mater degradation,  water and pollutant flow in this type of new filter generation.

Contact

magali.gerino_at_univ-tlse3.fr