Since then, the UK water industry has been carrying out tests using one of the project prototypes, phenolic carbon.

With a growing global population, competition for water is likely to increase, especially as climate change causes more extreme weather events, droughts and floods – disrupting supplies.

At the same time, human activities such as manufacturing and agriculture are releasing new contaminants into the environment, which seep into surface and groundwater. Water is a renewable resource, but rivers and aquifers are not inexhaustible. We need to be able to reuse the water we extract from them.

PolarClean, funded by an EU Marie Curie fellowship, set out to develop new ways of monitoring and removing so-called polar organic contaminants. These are substances that dissolve in water, and so are very difficult to separate and remove. They include pharmaceuticals, pesticides, hormones and endocrine disruptors, which attack hormone systems and damage human health. Until recently there has been no effective way of dealing with them.

PolarClean, coordinated by the University of Brighton in the UK, successfully tested the use of synthetic carbon and other innovative materials, including agricultural waste products, to adsorb or break down pollutants.

Great potential

“The project was successful and has helped to unveil the great potential of a new technology – nanostructured phenolic carbon – for solving current and future problems in water treatment,” explains researcher and Marie Curie Fellow Rosa Busquets. “New data on the benefits and limitations of some nanomaterials have been obtained, which will help society to have cleaner drinking water and wastewater effluents, resulting in a cleaner environment.

“The main benefit is a technology with a high capacity to clean water of certain contaminants that are affecting our surface, ground and drinking water. It has been shown to improve on existing approaches. The project has generated new knowledge on nanotechnology’s ability to address contamination problems.”

In 2012, the Technology Approval Group (TAG) – the innovation forum of the world’s leading water utilities – selected the PolarClean approach as one of the more innovative technologies in Europe, from a list of 500 candidates.

Since then, the UK water industry has shown interest in the findings and offered to carry out independent tests on the ability of one of the project prototypes, phenolic carbon, to purify water containing a cocktail of challenging contaminants which other technologies could not remove. A first pilot test was successful and further trials are under way.

“The application of this technology for cleaning water has been patented by our partner SME MAST Carbon International Ltd., which increases the competitivity of Europe and could generate new jobs,” adds Busquets. After the project ended in August 2013, she has further developed her career in science, taking up a lectureship and leading her own research group on ‘Environment, health and food safety’ at Kingston University in Surrey, UK.

“The project is very relevant to climate change,” she concludes. “Reusing water may be a requirement, not an option, in the future, and efficient technologies that help us to clean water will be essential.”