Depollution: new research and innovation platforms at the BRGM

In France, there are at least 9,000 polluted sites. They are often decommissioned or active industrial sites that have been polluted, usually by hydrocarbons, chlorinated solvents or heavy metals. These pollutants are often complex to deal with. To understand and address the issue, BRGM created PRIME: the Platform for Remediation and Innovation Serving Environmental Metrology. The goal is to offer these sites decontamination solutions to allow their future use and the risk-free use of groundwater. PRIME is BRGM's soil decontamination research platform launched through the Pivots program, financed by the Centre-Val-de-Loire region and Europe via the ERDF. The first of its three objectives is to quantify and identify pollutants in the environment and how they behave and transfer. The second objective is to forecast the behavior of these pollutants in our environment in the short and medium terms. The third is to offer solutions, tools and methods to decontaminate these sites. PRIME is a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers and technicians who develop complementary experimental installations spanning the full spectrum of research in the field. PRIME works on several scales, ranging from the small-batch, centimetric scale to the Plurimetric Pilot. This allows small-scale testing with environmental parameter variations before making scaling up in order to see the impact on the process, targeting full-scale implementation on site. We wanted all these tools to be adaptable to different projects, different sites and different pollutants. They are designed to develop a range of methods for soil and groundwater decontamination. The large-scale tool available to researchers is the Plurimetric Pilot, a large experimental tank that's unique in France. It simulates polluted soil under controlled conditions. Polluted soil or a model material, such as sand, is introduced, and groundwater flow is simulated. The aim is to introduce sensors and track the behavior of the pollutant in the pilot and then develop decontamination techniques to eliminate that pollutant. Decontamination techniques can be either chemical or biological. The pilots behind me use bacteria or even mushrooms to purge the soil of organic contaminants. The first concrete results from decontamination are expected within a few months. PRIME equipment can also be mobilized for external projects. The aim is to also create a digital twin, or a digital model of pilots that will allow researchers to simulate polluted sites by varying the parameters.