Nowadays, water scarcity is a big challenge facing humanity in many places around the world. To solve this problem, municipal wastewater (WW) is thus considered to be an alternative water source for various applications after proper treatment. Nonetheless, urban WWs are increasingly contaminated with organic micropollutants (OMPs) such as biocides and environmental persistent pharmaceutical substances (EPPS). Although their concentration in urban WWs is often very low (= 10 µg/L), their effects can be disastrous because of their potential persistence in the environment, their possible endocrine disrupting effect and their accumulation in biological bodies. These toxic compounds have become a major issue for the Water Utilities (REACH 2006, WFD 2000 and 2012) and in the coming years, legislations in European Union will be tightened with regard to OMPS in municipal WW and to the discharge of these substances. These evolutions are driving the WW treatment to come up with advanced technologies. Current research on possible treatments for waters polluted by bio-recalcitrant compounds is moving towards a coupling of processes, either traditional or more innovative, with a common objective of low energy consumption and high removal efficiency, to promote safe water reuse with a low environmental impact of effluent discharge. Membrane processes are under development but as membranes are only a separation step, they must be coupled with techniques for the efficient destruction of pollutants and then provide modern hybrid processes that can be used as well at the source of pollution as at a post-treatment step. With this aim in mind, Ozonation (O3) and Peroxone (O3 + H2O2) process are also investigated, as they generate highly active species, hydroxyl radicals. These radicals are able to attack most organic compounds non-selectively with high reaction rate. SAWARE is a project of applied research which objective is to develop an innovative and advanced “integrated membrane and oxidation system” of municipal WW coupling membrane bioreactor (MBR), nanofiltration (NF) and ozonation (O3) for a safe and affordable WW reuse. The main innovation of the SAWARE project lies in the MBR/ O3/ NF/ expected synergistic effect for advanced treatment of secondary effluent containing a cocktail of priority substances targeted by the legislation. MBR has been chosen as secondary treatment as it permits protection of NF and O3 from suspended matter. The main scientific objectives of the SAWARE project are to monitor the fate of eight priority and representatives substances in this new treatment, to propose the best design of such combined process and to verify the processes efficiency using a smart combination of analytical and toxicity assessments. The innovative approach will be i) to perform toxicity assessments to validate the treatment efficiency and potentiality; ii) to characterize separately biological, nanofiltration and ozonation removal mechanisms with real matrix; iii) to use innovative functionalized ceramic nanofilters resistant to ozone iv) to optimize the coupling MBR/ O3/ NF at pilot scale in order to prove the feasibility of such zero-discharge OMPS process; v) and to evaluate the efficiency and sustainability of the proposed solutions by a global analysis using Life Cycle Analysis and Cost-Benefit Analysis. This Life Cycle Assessment will put into perspective the benefic effect of SAWARE with the additional functionality that it brings (on site micropollutants treatment, rational use of chemicals…) compared to standard processes (granular and powder activated carbon or combination of tertiary treatments) from an environmental point of view.

This pilot research project, with immediate public-private partnership, aims to assess a panel of membrane and separation techniques that may be suitable for the treatment of coffee pulp, while allowing opportunities for innovative coupling technologies. Coffee pulp causes major environmental damages due to its toxicity but also to the huge volumes to be stored and processed. However, it contains molecules recognized for their strong industrial interest, such as polyphenols known for their antioxidant properties, caffeine having psychotropic and diuretic properties, and hydroxycinnamic acids used as precursors of high added value molecules. To our knowledge, no study using membrane and separation techniques has been carried out so far to treat and recycle wastes from this sector. Thus, the solid and complementary expertise of four partners will be turn towards these problematics: 2 French research laboratories (the Institut Européen des Membranes and Qualisud, from Montpellier) ; 1 French company (Eurodia Industrie SA, at Pertuis), 1 foreign research institute (the National Centre of Food Science and Technology, CITA in Costa Rica). The main two objectives are as follows: 1) To extract / separate / concentrate molecules of interest, for subsequent industrial development and 2) To eliminate toxic compounds from the pulp to ensure its immediate recycling (animal feeding, substrates, compost) . The research network instrument funding will allow us to assess the viability of the project through : - identification of technology lock-in in every unit operation tested ; - identification of both recoverable fractions and ultimates at each stage of processing, with respect to sustainable management (ecological, energetic and economic considerations); - offer of technological and conceptual responses : coupling, fallback, paradigm shift. The issue of the project is to develop a complete treatment and recovery system for coffee waste by promoting innovative, competitive and sustainable technologies (coupling and concepts). To do this, we will establish an international Research & Development Partnership Program, with scientists working at all levels of the treatment process, with coffee industries (cooperatives and independent producers), investors (exporters, importers), as well as local industries (food, (bio)processing), in order to meet the key challenges facing the food processing sector (waste recycling, toxicity and volume of wastes, water and energy consumption).

Development of fouling-resistant smart membranes selective for challenging protein separations is needed since separation of similar-sized proteins with current commercial membranes is not possible. The AFM_Ring project proposes a membrane skin layer design breakthrough, which consists of a well-ordered stimuli-responsive pores, able to separate similar-sized proteins, surrounded by post-functionalizable gold nanorings. Here, the nanorings are templated from the self-assembly of linear ABC triblock terpolymers into an out-of-plane core-shell cylindrical structure devised so that the ring-shaped domains have a preferential affinity with metallic precursors. After the deposition-reduction process, the gold nanorings, surrounding each uniform pore of the membrane, are easily functionalizable with thiol-terminated hydrophilic homopolymers, which prevents the pore blocking.

Single atom catalysts (SACs) are considered the ultimate form of catalysts. The behavior of SACs is generally directed by the coordination environment and the nature of the support. Indeed, supports with tunable coordination sites offer opportunities to stabilize individual atoms. Although the field of single atom catalysis has become an intense topic, practical applications in industrial processes are still lacking due to several bottlenecks such as their synthesis, stability and integration in a continuous catalytic reactor. With DESTINY, I propose a different approach by designing SACs on a ceramic support rationally designed by an additive manufacturing process. The ceramic support will confer high stability while the use of stereolithography 3D printing (SLA) will allow the preparation of supports with complex morphology to optimize the flow and interactions of reactants with individual atomic sites. The first objective will be to design light-sensitive inorganic precursors to stabilize single atoms after ceramization. The second objective will be to explore the behavior of 3D printed SACs for the hydrogenation of CO2 to ethanol and C2+ alcohols used as model reactions. My investigations will combine catalytic tests and advanced characterization techniques - especially in operando - in order to elucidate the correlation between the coordination of metal atoms in the ceramics and the reaction performance. The final objective will be to realize a 3D printed flow reactor based on ceramic supported SACs for the hydrogenation of CO2 to ethanol. The combination of the highly stable ceramic support and coordination site control through rational precursor design with the specific 3D architecture will enable high selectivity and CO2 conversion rate. DESTINY will be the first demonstration of 3D printing of SACs and will be a paradigm in process engineering, which will find practical applications for CO2 utilization.

Since its inception in 2010, Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly (PISA) has revolutionized the way polymer scientists synthesize block copolymers self-assembled nano-objects. PISA consists in synthesizing a solvophobic polymer block from a solvophilic polymer block usually using controlled radical polymerization techniques in dispersed media such as RAFT dispersion (or emulsion) polymerization. As the solvophobic polymer block grows, the in-situ formed amphiphilic block copolymer self-assembles to minimize the solvent-polymer interactions. PISA is very advantageous compared to other polymer self-assembly techniques since it allows the preparation of a variety of polymer morphologies (such as spherical micelles, worm-like micelles which often form physical gels, vesicles or framboidal particles to name a few) with a very high degree of purity (mixed morphologies often observed with other self-assembly techniques can be avoided), a very high degree of reproducibility, and in high concentrations (up to 50 % solids content). Peptides and proteins are a pivotal class of biological or synthetic oligomers that possess an almost endless variety of structural and functional properties. They constitute the core of the biological machinery and are involved in virtually all living organism processes. Proteins and peptides secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures are generally governed by non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonds, metal ion chelation, p-p stacking, van der Waals forces and so on. Relying on these interactions, simpler synthetic peptide structures able to self-assemble (self-assembling peptides (SAP)) were designed to provide supramolecular assemblies. SAP form organized tridimensional architectures such as fibers, ribbons, nano-tubes or nano-particles by interacting with each other via specific non-covalent interactions. The combination of the self-assembling properties of SAP and the PISA process to get hybrid organized polymer-peptide structures has never been explored. The mechanism at work in the self-assembly of diblock copolymer structures (worm-like structures, spheres, vesicles …) obtained by PISA relies almost only on hydrophilic-lipophilic balance, just like the majority of block-copolymer self-assembly work. Some studies have shown that electrostatic interactions, in the case of purely polycationic and polyanionic hydrophilic stabilizers, were detrimental to the formation of higher order morphologies and restricted the PISA particles to spherical shapes. In this context, PEPPISA proposes to investigate the original combination of PISA with SAP as inducers of structuration during or after the polymerization process. More precisely, we will study the effect of peptides specific interactions on the morphologies of objects obtained by PISA. We aim to answer the following scientific questions: - How do SAP influence the PISA self-assembly process? - What is the influence of the location of the SAP in the nano-objects? - Can these SAP-containing particles form higher order supramolecular constructs? PEPPISA will thus examine the interplay of the kinetically-governed self-assembly of diblock copolymers using PISA protocols and the likely thermodynamically-controlled structuring effect of peptide sequences. This pioneering project will provide a better understanding of the complex competitive or synergetic mechanisms at work during the self-assembly of peptide diblock copolymers.