This community of practice tackles the ever-growing challenges of environmental stewardship and sustainability in the context of the water-soil-waste nexus.
Global trends of rapid urbanisation and climate change pose serious threats to sustainable development and sustainable resource management. The nexus approach recognises that water, soil and waste are inextricably intertwined and therefore integrated management of these environmental resources is necessary in order to achieve sustainable development in the face of these global trends.
It is this need for an integrated approach that has propelled us to establish this community of practice for transdisciplinary research, within which knowledge is shared between researchers whose focus is on different nodes. This will facilitate and support a full nexus approach to our work in order to advance integrated and sustainable resource management.
For more information, contact Professor Frederic Coulon: f.coulon@cranfield.ac.uk.
Our focus areas
- Aeromicrobiology;
- Environmental biotechnology;
- Environmental monitoring for sustainable energy systems (including bioenergy, shale gas and CCS);
- Industrial ecology;
- Environmental pollution and remediation risk management;
- Water-soil-waste systemengineering and modelling;
- Resource recovery and circular economy.
- Advanced Sensors: Our research programme focuses on the development, design and fabrication of novel sensors for the Water-Environment-Health nexus that enable rapid and on-site testing.
- Environmental sensing and microfluidics
- Water quality and source tracking
- Wastewater-based Epidemiology
- Point-of-care diagnosis
Analytical expertise
| Analytical expertise | Examples of techniques |
|---|---|
| Volatile organic compounds (microbial VOCs and VOCs) Detection and quantification |
Teenax, Tedlar bags, wind tunnel, thermal desorption-gas chromatography mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS), selected-ion flow-tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS) |
| Gas sensors | Optical and quartz crystal microbalance / node wireless sensor network |
| Extractions | Ultrasonic, Soxhlet, solid phase extraction, accelerated solvent extraction, microwave-assisted solvent extraction (MSE) |
| Inorganic analytical techniques | Atomic absorbtion spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy, ion chromatography |
| Organic analytical techniques | Gas/liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GCMS and LCMS), gas chromatography with flame-ionization detection (GC-FID), HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography), gas chromatography with electron capture detection (GC-ECD) |
| Microbial ecology and toxicology | PLFA/PLEL profiling, Q-PCR, next-gen sequencing (NGS), flow cytometry, biosensors, seed germination, earthworm survival, catabolic profiling, respiration |
| Modelling | Fugacity, GoldSim Monte Carlo Simulation software, COMSOL Multiphysics® Modeling software |
| Pilot hall/wasterwater treatment plant and 8m3 anaerobic digester plant |
Gas testing, media beds, MBRs, ponds, upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB), feedstock biodegradation, biomethane potential, fate and transport of chemicals in genuine effluents, gas cleanup |
| Remediation pilot trial | Biopiles, turn windrows, mesocosms, bioreactors |
Recent publications
