The Eurecat technology centre is coordinating the European LIFE MySOIL project to test on a pilot scale the feasibility of mycoremediation using fungal inocula to remove petroleum hydrocarbons from soil, a kind of substance estimated to be present, on average, in 35 per cent of contaminated sites in Europe.
The MySOIL project, which is partly funded by the European Union’s LIFE programme and has a budget of 2,937,155 euros, seeks to develop ‘an appropriate, cost-effective and sustainable mycoremediation treatment for recovering contaminated soil’, says Xavier Martínez Lladó, the director of Eurecat’s Water, Air and Soil Unit.
The project includes three study areas in Spain, Italy and France ‘where we will perform an initial characterisation of the soil and contamination, biotreatability tests on a laboratory scale with various fungal inocula and then scale up the experiments until we achieve an optimised pilot test in biopiles’, says Jofre Herrero, the project’s technical coordinator and a researcher in Eurecat’s Water, Air and Soil Unit.
The project will also involve the development of ‘guidelines for implementing mycoremediation and conducting a replicability and transferability study for other areas and pollutants’, adds Carme Bosch, the head of Eurecat’s Soil and Groundwater Line.
The LIFE MySOIL project consortium includes seven other partners in addition to Eurecat: the Autonomous University of Madrid and engineering firm KEPLER (Spain), Tuscia University and the engineering firm Eni Rewind (Italy), the engineering firm VALGO (France), the fungus supplier Novobiom (Belgium) and environmental consultants Isodetect to provide monitoring services (Germany).
