SpilLess (First-line response to oil spills based on native microorganism cooperation) is a new European project led by the Interdisciplinary Marine and Environmental Research Center (Ciimar) of the University of Porto, in collaboration with INESC TEC, of the same University, the Geoma group of the CSIM-ECIMAT Marine Research Center (University of Vigo) and the companies ACSM, Biotrend and Marli.
The aim of this joint, multidisciplinary and international commitment is to develop services and products with commercial value to respond to incidents at sea caused by oil spills. This consortium was selected in the European Blue Labs call, a program that chose only four proposals from all over Europe related to blue growth, with the University of Vigo being present in three of them. Its initial launch took place this week in Porto with a meeting in which representatives of all the entities involved participated.
The SpilLess project has a duration of two years and a funding of 370,000 euros and brings together six partners, both public organizations and private companies, mainly from Portugal and Spain, but also with the participation of a Norwegian company. Professor Ana Paula Mucha, from Ciimar, is the general coordinator of a project that aims to develop an integrated solution that allows responding to oil spills using native microorganisms with the capacity to biodegrade oil (bioremediation) and their incorporation into unmanned autonomous vehicles that allow their application in areas affected by pollution incidents. “This new fast, effective and low-cost vision can be used as a first line of response to oil spills associated with accidents with ships, offshore oil platforms, ports or other industrial complexes,” explain the project researchers.
The Geoma group represents the University of Vigo in this project, led by Professor Ana Bernabeu. The scientists from Vigo will lead one of the eight work packages and will be responsible, on the one hand, for identifying the environmental limitations of bioremediation, a field in which they have extensive previous experience, and, on the other, for defining the environmental conditions at the different field work points so that the drones can operate “much more efficiently”.
A project with two very different parts
The project includes two very different lines of work, where microbiology and robotics will combine their potential to fight efficiently and quickly against marine pollution. On the one hand, the large-scale production of native microbial consortia for bioremediation and nutrient mixtures for their biostimulation (rapid growth) will be carried out. On the other hand, work will be done on the adaptation of unmanned autonomous vehicles, both surface and underwater, for the transport and release of these organisms in the affected areas. The researchers explain that this technology will constitute an aerial, surface and underwater combat system, which will be able to operate in unfavorable and severe weather conditions, with low human intervention. “We want an efficient production system to be generated, so that when there is an oil spill there can be an immediate response at the level of generation of these organisms”, highlights Bernabeu.
In the final stretch of the project, in situ tests are being carried out, and the members of the consortium are considering the possibility of doing them in the port of Ferrol, as well as in natural environments with different characteristics, both rocks and sandbanks, to test how both microorganisms and unmanned vehicles act in different conditions.
It is expected that in the final stretch of the project, different products will be available, such as a library of native microbial consortia for bioremediation, mixtures of additives to stimulate the activity of these microorganisms, devices for incorporating these agents into aerial, surface and submarine vehicles and an integrated protocol for the application of this tool. These products will be provided as a “turnkey” solution for combating marine oil pollution incidents.
Source: Duvi
