Task 1 – Definition of operational conditions for application of native microbial consortia
This task aims to establish the environmental and operational conditions in different spill situations and coastal environments, providing tools for the successful application of microbial consortia through unmanned aerial vehicles.
Task 2 – Development of native microbial consortia for hydrocarbon compounds degradation
This task aims to create a library of microbial consortia with high degradation capacity of hydrocarbons compounds and native to a target geographic marine region. For this, native consortia library concept will be first developed, following by the work-flow to select and preserve the native consortia with high ability for hydrocarbon degradation with a final step of their identification and characterization. Few of those selected cooperative native microbial consortia will be then used to optimize the scale up production (Task 3) and for the environmental tests (Task 6).
Task 3 – Optimization of consortia production for scale-up
This task focuses on the optimization of conditions for biomass production of the hydrocarbon degrading microbial consortia selected and catalogued in task 2, envisioning the formulation of a microbial product for application in hydrocarbon spill scenarios and its scaled-up production. The autochthonous microbial consortia enriched in Task 2, with the best capacity to degrade hydrocarbons, will be processed in order to achieve a product formulation to be applied by unmanned aerial vehicles as response to spill accidents with oil or maritime fuels (Tasks 4 and 5). The target will be to combine a high microbial growth rate with active hydrocarbon catabolic enzymes.
Task 4 – Development of the unmanned aerial spill combat system
The unmanned in-situ spill combat system based on bioremediation will comprise a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with containers and release systems for lyophilized bacteria consortia (bioaugmentation) and nutrients (biostimulation), and an application for mission control and data acquisition and processing. The release system will be controlled by a dedicated software, integrated in the vehicle control unit. A customized application will enable the mission planning and control, and also the acquisition and processing of environment data, thus providing valuable results of spill combat (before, during and after the combat mission). The deployment of this unmanned oil spill combat system will require the specification, development and implementation of the three main blocks: 1) containers and release systems for bacteria and nutrients, 2) the release control software, and 3) the application for mission control and data acquisition and processing.
Task 5 – Tests and demonstration
This task focuses on evaluating the bacteria and nutrient containers and release systems in both lab and field environments, and also to perform a fully working demonstration of an autonomous in-situ oil spill combat at a “quasi-real” scenario. The development of the containers and release systems for bacteria and nutrients will require several tests, in particular, integration tests with the UAVs, isolation tests of the containers, release tests and environmental conditions (the wind, waves, precipitation). These tests will be first performed in the lab, and after validation, new tests will be performed at semi-structured field controlled environments at the test locations selected in Task 1.
Task 6 - Dissemination activities
This task aims to communicate and disseminate BIOREM initiative to a broad audience, including the general public and stakeholders, in order to increase BIOREM visibility and raise awareness about marine pollution.
