Around twenty final-year students of the degrees in Industrial Chemical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, as well as the PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of the University of La Laguna, participated in the course \u201cBioremediation of industrial pollutants\u201d, held at the end of January and which addressed the potential of microorganisms in the degradation of industrial pollutants, especially those of emerging concern and their application in the treatment of contaminated media.<\/p>\n
The course was taught by Eduardo Beltr\u00e1n, a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who graduated in Industrial Chemical Engineering and obtained his master's degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of La Laguna, and later completed his doctorate in Environmental Sciences and Technologies at the Catalan institution.<\/p>\n
In her final year projects at the Tenerife center, Beltr\u00e1n showed interest in the development of materials and technologies with environmental applications, and in her doctoral thesis she studied the development of fungal bioreactors for treating water contaminated with emerging pollutants, especially pesticides. Currently, her research at the UAB, funded by a competitive national project, is focused on scaling up a fungal bioreactor for in-situ application in the treatment of agricultural wash water.<\/p>\n
Course on biological purification<\/strong><\/p>\n The training activity, equivalent to 1 ECTS credit, aimed to expand upon the basic training students receive on biological wastewater treatment, applied to both domestic and industrial wastewater. The presence of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in this water, due to their bioaccumulative, persistent, and toxic nature, can pose a risk to the environment and human health, even at low concentrations.<\/p>\n The course was organized by the Water Treatment and Reuse research group of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Technology. This group is currently developing a research project under the direction of Professor Luisa Vera, with the aim of optimizing the operation of membrane photobioreactors (PID2021125404OB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation AEI\/10.13039\/501100011033\/ and \u201cERDF A way of making Europe\u201d funds.<\/p>\n These bioreactors promote the growth and development of phototrophic microorganisms that facilitate the treatment of domestic wastewater with varying levels and types of prior treatment. Similar to studies conducted by Beltr\u00e1n at the UAB, the behavior and evolution of microcontaminants, including microplastics, are evaluated. The photobioreactors, developed and operated with real wastewater, incorporate filtration membranes of different chemical compositions to retain these microorganisms within the reactors and produce purified water suitable for reuse.<\/p>\n The practical examples presented by Beltr\u00e1n in his classes explored the capabilities of microorganisms of different types (fungi, bacteria, and microalgae) to minimize the use of chemical compounds when degrading and reducing the harmful effects of chemical substances present in industrial wastewater. In the case of the research conducted at the University of La Laguna, these same microorganisms are being used to promote the circular economy, producing reclaimed water suitable for reuse in agricultural irrigation and recovering organic matter and nutrients as biofuel, biofertilizer, and biostimulant.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around twenty final-year students from the degrees in Industrial Chemical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, as well as from\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":7904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,248,1264,501,22,10],"tags":[3572,502,3573,3574,3575,3463,1773],"class_list":["post-7903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destacado","category-docencia","category-grado-en-ciencias-ambientales","category-grado-en-ingenieria-quimica-industrial","category-grados","category-portada-ull","tag-contaminantes","tag-curso","tag-depuracion-de-agua","tag-eduardo-beltran","tag-grado-en-ciencias-ambientales","tag-grado-en-ingenieria-quimica-industrial","tag-luisa-vera"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/curso-depuracion-agua-300x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}