report
6.5.6 Current situation within the EU

There are currently four EU FP7 projects carried out on the remediation of water with nanotechnology:

MONOCAT - Monolithic reactors structured at the nano and micro levels for catalytic

water purification

WATERMIM - Water Treatment by Molecularly Imprinted Materials

Nametech - Development of intensified water treatment concepts by integrating

nano- and membrane technologies

Clean Water - Water Detoxification Using Innovative vi-Nanocatalysts

The short description of these projects can be found at: http://circa.europa.eu/Public/irc/rtd/eesdwatkeact/library?l=/projects_information/catalogue_projectspdf_1/_EN_1.0_&a=d

Unlike with soils, groundwater is always public property and thus orders for remediation come from governmental bodies. Field trials and first full-scale projects in different countries are thus mostly supervised by a state body. Still the release of nanoparticles into the environment is not regulated. Anyone could buy and release for example nZVI in any quantity.

The Perebar-Project (http://www.perebar.bam.de) investigated the Long-term Performance of Permeable Reactive Barriers used for the Remediation of Contaminated Groundwater. It focuses on conventional materials but the treatment method is comparable to the methods used for the application of nZVI.

In the US, the Center for Groundwater research is investigating the use of nZVI for the groundwater remediation. More information on their research is found at: http://cgr.ese.ogi.edu/iron/