And the winners are…

The annual cycle of dry and rainy seasons causes soil salinization to become major abiotic constrains limiting agricultural production in arid and semi-arid regions. With the climate change, population booming and increasing global food demand, developing countries are experiencing severe food crisis. The salinity issue remains as major challenge. We developed a low-cost water-efficient salinity prevention system through capillary barrier (CB). The objectives of our study were to introduce an artificial CB, which made up of lime (e.g., calcium chloride, converter slag, and plant and wood ash), gravel and plant residue. We found the salinization suppression without requiring huge amount of water by the CB application.

This low-cost and water-saving system will surely pave a new path for sustainable agriculture.

Water pollution constitutes a major set-back to the availability of safe water for consumption and other uses, especially in under developed countries.

In consonance with this year’s theme, “Seeing the unseen: The value of water”, I have the intention of solving this great menace. In this paper, we will have an insight into certain problems we all encounter in everyday life and how they affect us. SoCAC (Solar Cyanotoxins and Aromatic Contaminants) Water Purifier stands as the solution to these problems. This paper will also highlight the importance and applications of SoCAC Water Purifier over other methods of water purification.

The work carried out was aimed at assisting oxidative processes, for the treatment of water effluents with organic substances contamination. The methodology employed was consistent with a primary oxidation by the action of ozone (ozonolysis), followed by a photocatalytic oxidation, by the action of photocatalysts activated by ultraviolet radiation.

To check the efficacy of the proposal, an experimental pilot plant was designed to test and evaluate the process under scale conditions, providing as an advance the specificity of the photoactive catalysts by ultraviolet light, in conjunction with an ozone producer as a coadjuvant of the process.

The technological development was verified through a simulation in the prototype with a river effluent with high organic pollution, testing the progress of the process through Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) measurements.

The results obtained showed a high degradation rate of organic matter, above 70%, with a 3rd order reaction kinetics. These values give us an optimistic expectation when it comes to choose a viable treatment for this type of effluent.

Wastewater is one of the main sources of pollution of aquatic ecosystems and the cause of disruption of self-regulation and self-restoration of water bodies. Therefore, the issue of improving wastewater treatment system is relevant for most settlements of Ukraine.

As a result of the study of the operation of treatment plants, a number of factors were identified: actual capacity of treatment plants is twice less than the designed one, it causes secondary water pollution; the supply of wastewater to treatment plants is carried out unevenly during the day and year, it negatively affects the quality of wastewater treatment from nutrients. Technical solutions for stabilization of urban wastewater treatment processes in order to reduce the content of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds in treated wastewater are proposed.

My research project is founded in my curiosity of how we with modern technologies can make sustainable use of marine resources, including sustainable management of fisheries and aquaculture. Therefore, I will investigate how we, with the least environmental impact, utilize the sea’s benefits in the development of an efficient and sustainable aquaculture that will contribute to a sustainable development of the aquaculture sector in Denmark. The focus of my project is the development of an aquaculture system where different organisms such as mussels, algae and cultivated fish live in a nature-like ecological system as an alternative to traditional fishing and conventional fish farms.

One of the most widespread environmental problems in an industrializing world, is heavy metal pollution. The exposure of the body to high concentrations of these elements constitutes a great health hazard. Today’s methods of water purification have great costs and high environmental risk.While investigating the issue Emma, Alessandro, and Silvia have found out a cheaper alternative with also a lower ecological imprint. The idea here is to use spent coffee grounds as a substrate for adsorption of heavy metals from aqueous solution. Their studies have shown high percentages of adsorption in mono and multicomponent solutions.

Dans la commune d’Abomey-Calavi, la Société béninoise des eaux (SONEB) ne couvre pas toutes les communes dans la distribution d’eau potable. Cette situation oblige les ménages qui n’ont aucun moyen de forer à utiliser l’eau du puits pour tous les usages domestiques, y compris la boisson. 

Les résultats obtenus sur les trois échantillons pour les analyses montrent que les eaux ménagères sont dures. Les résultats obtenus sur les trois échantillons concernant la dureté révèlent que les eaux sont dures. En conséquence, les ménages font face à des dépenses financières. Ceci est d’une importance cruciale pour notre projet.

Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms found mainly in surface waters. High concentrations of nutrients (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus), lead to the formation of harmful cyanobacterial blooms known as “cyanoHABs”. These harmful cyanobacteria have the capability of releasing a plethora of cyanotoxins which can have adverse effects not only on the human and animal health but also on the aquatic ecosystem.

This study aimed to examine the effect of humics on calcium peroxide (CaO2) granules treatment to suppress the proliferation of the Microcystis sp. bloom in a surface water matrix. This study emphasizes the necessity of developing an efficient and affordable treatment to eliminate cyanoHABs that may be present over wide areas of water and have the ability to threaten the aquatic ecosystem.

Project Current is a collaborative student led project with local industry and Kristiansand International School. The project uses relatively low cost battery driven pressure sensors, and continuously collects data from a local stream in Kvinesdal, where the data is sent wirelessly using Long Range Radio Signals (LORA) to a server. In collaboration with Intoto AS, based at Coverks in Kvinesdal, data on the server is processed continuously and presented.

The goal is to predict floods in the sensor placement area after long term data collection is imputed into a machine learning algorithm.

Microplastic (MP) and heavy metal pollution in water bodies is becoming an increasingly pressing problem in recent years. Electrocoagulation (EC) has previously been shown to be an effective treatment method to remove heavy metals and MPs from wastewater individually. This project aims to study the application of EC in removing copper and microspheres from simulated wastewater simultaneously. Our results suggest that EC can be used to remove both contaminants concurrently, and the presence of copper in wastewater increased removal efficiency of microspheres.

The overall purpose of the investigation is to find the most suitable way to generate electrical energy and to propose the best design of the piezoelectric water treatment system (PWTS). Piezoelectric effect converts mechanical stress into electrical energy by the generation of electric charge and hence a voltage. We reached a conclusion that piezoelectricity will have the most efficient power generation when the source of power is from water droplets. We found that this is extremely beneficial as droplet formation is governed by physics which results in controllability and reliability of energy production. Droplets can also be used at various scales and locations. 

Harmful algae blooms plague aquatic ecosystems around the world. They impact water quality and ecosystem diversity, cause dead zones, and cost the fishing and tourism industries millions of dollars. In this project, different genotypes of Daphnia magna were compared for algae consumption. The most effective genotype was then tested under different environmental conditions to see which factors helped or hindered their success at harmful algae bloom treatment and prevention. It was discovered that genotype 4 is the ideal genotype of D. magna to biomanipulate to treat and prevent harmful algae blooms, can effectively do this in nutrient and plastic polluted environments, and can have their health and success improved through calcium carbonate and naturally occurring aquatic microbes.