Comprehensive modelling of nanoparticles fate in soils – COMMON

Nanoparticles (NPs) are used in a wide range of industrial, agricultural, and domestic applications, most of which are toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative. Generally, predicting the fate of contaminants in soils is an extremely challenging task, primarily due to the complexity of soils and the lack of powerful analytical tools capable of studying their transport and interactions in opaque porous media (the "soil is a black box"). This is further exacerbated for nanoparticles due to their different size distributions and surface coatings, as well as the complexity of their interactions with soil constituents.

To overcome the current limitations in predicting the fate of NPs in soils, this project aims to use advanced NMR/MRI experiments to conduct in-depth experimental investigations into the interactions of NPs and soils (minerals and organic matter) at the molecular level (WP1) and on the transport of NPs within increasingly complex porous media (WP2). These experimental data will be used to develop a new framework for modeling reactive transport (WP3), integrating molecular-level interactions, reaction rates, thermodynamic parameters, and spatial information inside soils. This will be done under different water saturation conditions (from 100% to 60%) to approximate real-world conditions.

This multi-scale and interdisciplinary project will bring together three research teams with complementary expertise that have already studied the fate of NPs in soils and successfully collaborated in the past. This includes the use of advanced NMR/MRI experiments to study the interactions and transport of NPs in soils, in-depth experience in controlling surface minerals of porous media, and modeling reactive transport.