Highlights:
- The presence of important concentrations of dyestuffs in wastewaters presents a great and dual problem to face: colour and chemicals (toxicity and/or mutagenicity). Dyestuffs are designed to resist the atmospheric conditions and, so, the classical and generalist biological aerobic plants are inadequate to treat them. During the last decade, several methods of colour removal and/or chemical decomposition from wastewaters containing dyestuffs, and particularly azo dyes, have been found effective and potentially applicable for scaling up.
In particular, processes to treat wastewaters in reductive atmosphere in presence of microorganisms placed over active carbon (BAC, biological active carbon treatments) seem to be really indicated to be the new technological approach. The synergistic effect of bioreaction, adsorption and the action of AC as redox mediator has permitted to obtain, as preliminary results, very high conversions at very short times of reaction. - The objective of the proposed study is to go deeper in the use of this new technique for environmental purposes, try to overcome the technical limitations observed using membrane technologies and check the possibility to expand the use of BAC systems for non environmental purposes
- Requirements: A master degree (or equivalent), ending before September 2010, is required with excellent academic records in chemical/environmental/process engineering, applied chemistry or closely related areas. Good knowledge of English is mandatory.