Publications related to Phytoremediation of soils contaminated by organic compounds: hype, hope and facts

Soil warming alters tree water use and canopy stomatal conductance in a mixed subtropical forest

As air temperature and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increase continuously, forests are losing more water through evapotranspiration, with large consequences for local and global hydrological cycles. In regions with high vegetation cover, soil warming can b ...

Elsevier2024

Investigation of microbial community dynamics in soil during variable hydrological forcing

Simiao Wang

Climate change is expected to alter the temporal distribution of precipitation events, leading to prolonged drought periods and an increased frequency of extreme precipitation events. Changes in precipitation pattern will directly affect soil moisture dyna ...

EPFL2024

Estrogenic, Genotoxic, and Antibacterial Effects of Chemicals from Cryogenically Milled Tire Tread

Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Kristin Schirmer, Benoît Jean Dominique Ferrari, Thibault Béranger Masset

Tire and road wear particles (TRWP) contain complex mixtures of chemicals and release them to the environment,and potential toxic effects of these chemicals still need to be characterized. We used a standardized surrogate for TRWP,cryogenically milled tire ...

2024

Reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks in single organisms and microbial communities

Evangelia Vagena

Microorganisms are a key component in the chain of life. They are essential for agriculture, produce a large proportion of oxygen, and play a central role in the cycle of elements. Microorganisms are widely used in the production of food and alcoholic beve ...

EPFL2024

Fungal Planet description sheets: 1478-1549

Michele Saba, Sanjeev Kumar, Guilhem Maurice Louis Banc-Prandi

Novel species of fungi described in this study include those from various countries as follows: Australia, Aschersonia mackerrasiae on whitefly, Cladosporium corticola on bark of Melaleuca quinquenervia, Penicillium nudgee from soil under Melaleuca quinque ...

Leiden2023

Linking Soil Structure, Hydraulic Properties, and Organic Carbon Dynamics: A Holistic Framework to Study the Impact of Climate Change and Land Management

Sara Bonetti

Climate change and unsustainable land management practices have resulted in extensive soil degradation, including alteration of soil structure (i.e., aggregate and pore size distributions), loss of soil organic carbon, and reduction of water and nutrient h ...

2023

Consider the Anoxic Microsite: Acknowledging and Appreciating Spatiotemporal Redox Heterogeneity in Soils and Sediments

Vincent Noel, Meret Aeppli

Reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions underlie essentially all biogeochemical cycles. Like most soil properties and processes, redox is spatiotemporally heterogeneous. However, unlike other soil features, redox heterogeneity has yet to be incorporated into ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Improving planar optode lifetime: encapsulation and optical release of pH-sensing optodes and assessment of their lifetime in situ

Victoria Alexandrine Julia Suzanne Marthe Fay

PurposePlanar fluorescent optodes are important tools for probing key parameters, such as the soil pH, O2 level, and CO2 level, associated with the biology and biochemistry process in the rhizosphere. In this paper, we address an important limitation of ex ...

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG2023

Lignin Hydrogenolysis: Phenolic Monomers from Lignin and Associated Phenolates across Plant Clades

Jeremy Luterbacher, Yuan Li

The chemical complexity of lignin remains a major challengeforlignin valorization into commodity and fine chemicals. A knowledgeof the lignin features that favor its valorization and which plantsproduce such lignins can be used in plant selection or to eng ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Influence of a lossy ground on the lightning performance of overhead transmission lines

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Rafael Silva Alipio

This paper investigates the impact of incorporating both displacement currents and frequency-dependent soil parameters in the calculation of the ground-return impedance for the determination of the backflashover rate of 138 kV and 230 kV overhead transmiss ...

Elsevier2023

Oxidative Water Treatment: The Track Ahead

Urs von Gunten, Yun Ho Lee

Chemical oxidation has been applied in municipal water treatment for more than a century, initially for disinfection. In the early decades, chlorine disinfection was adopted in the fight against waterborne disease. However, the oxidative properties of chlo ...

2023

Sunshine and a pinch of tropical soils: A natural, low-cost photo-Fenton variation for safer water, assisted by H2O2 or percabonate

Michaël Bensimon, César Pulgarin, Stefanos Giannakis, Jérémie Decker, Thomas Guillaume

Clean water is essential for human survival, but access to safe drinking water remains a challenge in resource -limited regions. Herein, we explored a low-cost but effective solution for water potabilization using natural iron sources from soils along with ...

ELSEVIER2023

An Overview of Heterogeneous Catalysts Based on Hypercrosslinked Polystyrene for the Synthesis and Transformation of Platform Chemicals Derived from Biomass

Lioubov Kiwi

Platform chemicals, also known as chemical building blocks, are substances that serve as starting materials for the synthesis of various value-added products, which find a wide range of applications. These chemicals are the key ingredients for many fine an ...

MDPI2023

Tuning the reactivity of uranium towards small molecules in multimetallic complexes

Nadir Jori

One of the main goals of organometallic chemistry in the last decades was the activation of small molecule in mild reaction conditions. Even though multiple examples of catalytic cycles able to produce fine chemicals from cheap and abundant sources using t ...

EPFL2023

Autocatalysis and CO2: Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) Meets Natural Processes

Paul Joseph Dyson, Martin Hulla, Jorge Gustavo Uranga, Gabriela Gastelu

Autocatalytic reactions were proposed to play a key role at the beginning of life starting from the first reduction of CO2 to formate, acetate and C-1-C-4 hydrocarbons. In carbon capture and utilization (CCU) processes, the same reactions were demonstrated ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag2023

Sulfurospirillum diekertiae sp. nov., a tetrachloroethene-respiring bacterium isolated from contaminated soil

Christof Holliger, Julien Maillard, Junxiong Wang

Two anaerobic, tetrachloroethene- (PCE-) respiring bacterial isolates, designated strain ACSDCE T and strain ACSTCE, were characterized using a polyphasic approach. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, motile, non-spore-forming and shared a vibrioid- to spirill ...

2023

Separable Brønsted acidic imidazolium salts for polysaccharide hydrolysis in water

Kedar Ashok Abhyankar

The current reliance on limited petrochemical resources and the resulting ecological outcomes have made the exploration of alternative chemical and energy feedstocks invaluable. As such, the development of sustainable processes with a less harmful total en ...

EPFL2023

Process modeling and integration of hydrogen and synthetic natural gas production in a kraft pulp mill via black liquor gasification

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

The black liquor gasification integrated to chemical plants has shown potential for reducing the process irreversibility and promoting the decarbonization of this industrial sector. In the integrated chemical plants proposed in this work, the purpose is co ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Lignin, from biomass waste to sustainable materials for food packaging, antiviral coatings and agriculture

Alice Boarino

Our planet has been challenged for years by our reckless use of fossil fuels, which has led to the ongoing climate change and energy crisis. The transition to the use of renewable alternative sources has now became urgent and inevitable. The valorization o ...

EPFL2023

Addressing chemical pollution in biodiversity research

Kristin Schirmer, Colette vom Berg, Ahmed Tlili

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution are planetary-scale emergencies requiring urgent mitigation actions. As these "triple crises" are deeply interlinked, they need to be tackled in an integrative manner. However, while climate change ...

WILEY2023