Blog

A pesquisadora Larissa Terumi Arashiro é presença confirmada no II Congresso internacional da APEB-NL, no qual vai apresentar sua pesquisa sobre a otimização de sistemas de tratamento de águas residuais com base em algas. O congresso acontece dia 13 de abril, em Delft. Larissa fez seu bacharelado em engenharia ambiental na UNESP, mestrado (com bolsa Erasmus Mundus) na Ghent University (Bélgica), UNESCO-IHE (Holanda) e UCTP (República Tcheca) e tem experiência na indústria e em organizações internacionais, como no IWA, na Holanda (International Water Association). Atualmente, Larissa é uma Marie Curie fellow, realizando sua pesquisa de doutorado na Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Espanha) e na Ghent University (Bélgica).

Maiores informações:

Biography: Larissa is an Environmental Engineer graduated from São Paulo State University. She worked in industry for three years, where she acquired relevant experience in organizational Quality, Environmental, Health and Safety (QEHS) management systems and product certifications. In 2013, she was granted the Erasmus Mundus scholarship for the International Master of Science in Environmental Technology and Engineering, organized by Ghent University (Belgium), UNESCO-IHE (Netherlands) and UCTP (Czech Republic). Afterwards, she gained experience in international projects on water and sanitation at the International Water Association (IWA, Netherlands).
She is currently a Marie Curie fellow of a joint PhD programme between Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) and Ghent University (Belgium). Her research focuses on wastewater treatment and resources recovery using microalgae.

Master: IMETE (Erasmus Mundus Master Program) – International Master of Science in Environmental Technology and EngineeringGhent University (Belgium), UNESCO-IHE (Netherlands) and UCTP (Czech Republic)

PhD Research:

During the past decades, the water crisis has raised global concern. However, the treatment on a global scale is still expensive and energy intensive, whereas energy and components contained in polluted water, such as organic chemicals, nitrogen, phosphorus, mineral salts and metals can be of significant benefit if they are properly harvested. Effective recovery of resources not only minimizes environmental impacts, but also represents an economic benefit and can contribute to minimizing negative impacts and scarcity of natural resources.

In this context, the use of microalgae has been proven to be an effective alternative to combine wastewater treatment and resources recovery. The great advantage of microalgae technologies is that, in addition to treating wastewater, the biomass grown can be reused to recover energy and high-value compounds, generating alternatives for a circular economy. However, technological processes and systems should be improved to efficiently transform wastewater into valuable products. This research project aims to optimize algae-based wastewater treatment systems and identify configurations that would allow sustainable resources recovery options, based on the following objectives:

1) Optimize configurations of high rate algal ponds (HRAPs) systems for urban wastewater treatment and explore the energy recovery from the biomass through biogas production.

2) Investigate the use of photobioreactors (PBRs) for tertiary treatment and explore the recovery of high-value phycochemicals (e.g. pigments) through various extraction techniques.

3) Biogas and high-value compounds recovery technologies will be assessed and compared from a technical, environmental and economic point of view. In particular, a life cycle assessment (LCA) and a life cycle costing (LCC) will be carried out to evaluate the feasibility and sustainability of these alternatives and their combinations.