About
76
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Introduction
Research topics: Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment; Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS); Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD); Low impact developement (LID); Sponge cities; River restoration; Ecosystem services; Nature-based solutions; Circular economy; Green-Blue Infrastructures; Sustainable sanitation; Sustainable water management; Climate change adaptation.
Membershio:International Water Association (IWA).
Editorship: Editorial Board of Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN)
Additional affiliations
Position
- Civil and Environmental Engineer - Research and Development
January 2011 - December 2014
Position
- Modeling human-made wetlands (paddy fields and constructed wetland)
Description
- I dealt with: modeling of water, nutrients, and heat transport in paddy soils; modeling of paddy soil biogeochemistry; modeling of plant-mediated gas exchange between soil and atmosphere through rice roots.
Education
January 2011 - December 2013
Politecnico di Torino
Field of study
- Engineering for Natural and Built Environment
January 2007 - July 2010
Field of study
- Civil Engineering (I Engineering Faculty), hydraulic address
Publications
Publications (76)
Urban areas face challenges with water scarcity, and the use of non-conventional water resources for uses not requiring potable quality is being promoted more and more by governments and international agencies. However, non-conventional water resources, such as rainwater and greywater, need to be treated before use to avoid health risks and possibl...
Due to accelerating climate change and the need for new development to accommodate population growth, adaptation of urban drainage systems has become a pressing issue in cities. Questions arise whether decentralised urban drainage systems are a better alternative to centralised systems, and whether Nature Based Solutions' (NBS) multifunctionality a...
This work investigated the long-term (>1000 days) performance of an integrated process consisting of an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) coupled to a two-stage (saturated and unsaturated) vertical subsurface flow constructed wetland (VSSF-CW) for the treatment of up to 91.3 ± 10.3 m3/d domestic wastewater. The UASB reactor operated under ambi...
The combination of treatment wetlands (TWs) with microbial electrochemical technologies (MET) is often studied in the lab to improve the performance and decrease the footprint of TWs. In this article we evaluated the long-term performance of four pilot-scale vertical sub-surface flow TWs for major pollutants' and organic micropollutants' removal fr...
When nature-based solutions (NBS) are developed with a primary scope, they also provide simultaneous additional economic, social, and environmental benefits, i.e., Ecosystem Services. A monetary assessment that accounts for these additional benefits is provided by this work, with a focus on Europe. Specifically, this is intended to evaluate nine id...
Nature-based solutions are increasingly used in domestic wastewater treatment, because of their potential to remove contaminants and pathogens from water (e.g., stormwater, river water, wastewater) as well as their provided co-benefits, such as mitigation of the heat island effect or enhanced biodiversity. The transition from traditional grey techn...
Floating treatment wetlands are considered a promising and low-cost technology for the treatment of polluted water and wastewater. However, their functionality and efficiency in different types of wastewater are not fully understood. In this study, several ornamental plant species (monocultures: Canna sp., Iris sp., polyculture: Iris orientalis, Cy...
This book comprises six chapters prepared by the COST Action Circular City (https://circular-city.eu/). The Action aims to establish a network of researchers and stakeholders testing the hypothesis that: ‘A circular flow system that implements nature-based solutions (NBS) for managing nutrients and resources within the urban biosphere will lead to...
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) constitute nowadays a major environmental concern, representing one of the main untreated sources of pollution for receiving water bodies. Additional, in recent years, the frequency and intensity of CSOs have increased due to the growing urbanisation and climate change. Although there is no single effective strategy,...
This study focuses on the use of climbing ornamentals and ornamental plants for greywater treatment in vertical flow constructed wetlands. Different design parameters, such as substrate (sand or vermiculite), the use of saturation zone, and plant species (Trachelospermum jasminoides, Lonicera japonica, Callistemon laevis) were evaluated for optimal...
The application of the integrated UASB-CW system serves as an efficient technology for sanitation and water reclamation. The combination of this wastewater treatment scheme with an agroforestry system, which is irrigated by reclaimed water, aims to be an interesting demonstration of a circular approach to wastewater management. This work focuses on...
The treatment of greywater (GW, wastewater share excluding toilet flush) through green walls can be beneficial for urban areas, favouring the diffusion of urban vegetation and reducing potable water consumption. Multiple challenges hinder the treatment performance of green walls, including the composition of the filtering material, the number of le...
There is an increasing attention on Nature-based Solutions (NBS) to address social and environmental challenges in Europe, including the control of excess nutrients conveyed by agricultural regions. Indeed, the excess of nutrients has been recognized as one of the main reasons of failure to achieve a good ecological status of water bodies, accordin...
The challenge of water reclamation on decentralized water-scarce areas could be addressed with the application of low-cost nature-based solutions. This work investigated the performance of an integrated upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor coupled with a two-stage vertical flow constructed wetlands system designed to treat the sewage of a...
This work evaluated four pilot-scale constructed wetlands (CWs), three of which were filled with electroconductive material to enhance the complex physical, chemical and biological reactions and one that was filled with gravel but aerated, for the treatment of domestic wastewater under different organic loading (OLR) values. The difference among th...
A few nature-based wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) designed in three arid countries, i.e. Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia are presented in this chapter, with a focus on the potential of treated wastewater reuse in line with circular economy concepts. All the presented systems are Horizontal Subsurface Flow (HF) Constructed Wetlands (CWs) (Egypt, Pa...
This work investigates the operation of a full-scale scheme for domestic wastewater treatment at ambient temperature consisting of two parallel upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors coupled to a two-stage system of saturated and unsaturated vertical flow constructed wetlands (CWs) in series. The system is designed to treat up to 100 m 3 /...
Evaluation of the operation of an integrated UASB – Vertical sub-surface flow (VSSF) constructed wetland (CW) system for the treatment of domestic wastewater in a Greek village to
produce reclaimed water that is suitable for agricultural irrigation.
The enhancement of constructed wetlands (CW) performance in terms of biological and physicochemical processes can be achieved with the use of alternative filling materials, that aid the metabolism of specific bacteria. Comparing to the conventional CW design guidelines (DWA, 2018) which is around 20 g COD m-2 d-1¸ electroconductive CWs are capable...
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming a relevant approach to design urban green areas as green-blue infrastructures (GBIs) capable of delivering multiple ecosystem services. Thanks to the key aspect of providing multiple benefits, GBIs are one of the main solutions proposed for Climate Change (CC) adaptation and mitigation. At the same time, co...
In the last decades, urban sprawl and soil sealing led to an increase of urban flooding phenomena. Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) seem able to weaken stormwater-related criticalities, enhancing sustainability and city resilience.
Relying on a detailed and feasible preparatory study of SuDS feasible retrofit design, based on a punctual identifi...
A set of hybrid, nature-based solutions, namely anaerobic baffled reactor + vertical flow constructed wetlands for treating blackwater, and degreaser + vertical flow constructed wetlands for treating graywater, have been installed and monitored for more than 2 years at the College of Engineering Campus in Pune, India. The whole system has processed...
Urban sprawl and soil sealing has gradually led to an impervious surface increase with consequences on the enhancement of flooding risk. During the last decades, a hybrid approach involving both traditional storm water detention tanks (SWDTs) and low-impact development (LID) has resulted in the best solution to manage urban flooding and to improve...
https://www.isprambiente.gov.it/it/pubblicazioni/periodici-tecnici/reticula/reticula-n-28-2021-numero-monografico
According to the European Research and Innovation Policy Agenda, nature-based solutions (NBSs) are key technologies to improve the sustainability of urban areas. Among NBSs, green walls have been recently studied for several applications, among the others the treatment of lowly polluted wastewater flows as greywater (GW, e.g. domestic wastewater ex...
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have been proven to effectively mitigate and solve resource depletion and climate-related challenges in urban areas. The COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CA17133 entitled “Implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) for building a resourceful circular city” has established seven urban circularity challe...
In the situation of water scarcity in which we currently find ourselves, safeguarding the water resources, by promoting wastewater reuse and recovery, is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, in the perspective of circular economy, the treatment with nature-based solutions (NBS) of wastewater in order to reuse it, while also recovering resour...
This work examined the start-up of a full-scale upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB)-vertical flow constructed wetland (CW) for domestic wastewater treatment. The UASB reactors were inoculated with sludge originating from an industrial anaerobic reactor and the start-up period due to the slow growth rate of anaerobic sludge and the low temperatur...
There are 2.4 billion people without improved sanitation and another 2.1 billion with inadequate sanitation (i.e. wastewater drains directly into surface waters), and despite improvements over the past decades, the unsafe management of fecal waste and wastewater continues to present a major risk to public health and the environment (UN, 2016). Ther...
El primer Reporte Cientifico y Tecnológico (STR, por sus siglas del inglés, Scientific and Technical Report) sobre la tecnología de humedales fue publicado en el 2000. Con el desarrollo exponencial de la tecnología desde entonces, la generación de un nuevo STR fue desarrollada por el Grupo de trabajo de la IWA sobre la integración de la tecnología...
Constructed wetlands (CWs) are nature-based solutions (NBS) for water pollution control that can also be designed to be multipurpose in terms of additional ecosystem services (ESs), such as biodiversity support and social benefits. Awareness about additional ESs of CWs can be raised with value transfer (VT) methods for ESs monetization, in particul...
Graywater (GW), i.e., the portion of household wastewater that excludes toilet flushes, is an interesting wastewater type because it requires only mild treatment. Green walls have been proposed as example of a nature-based solution for GW treatment due to low energy requirement and high ecological/societal benefits; however, indications about their...
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a major source of surface water pollution and degradation. This is particularly visible where sewage collection with combined sewer and centralized treatment are well established, such as in Europe and North America: an overwhelming number of surface water bodies are in insufficient status of ecology, hydrology a...
Nature-based solutions (NBS) can protect, manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems. They are a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to address societal challenges and some natural hazards effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits. NBS applications can be easily noticed in circular cit...
Featured Application
Online monitoring by specific sensors can represent a reliable and essential component for smart information technologies (IT)-enhanced Constructed Wetland systems for industrial wastewater treatment.
Abstract
Nature-based solutions, such as Constructed Wetlands (CWs), for the treatment of industrial wastewater can be more eff...
TWs are proven to be efficient in treatment and reuse of greywater and can play a fundamental role in future circular economy approaches to wastewater treatment with
nature-based solutions (NBS). GW can be treated on-site by NBS like TWs located in the
external available space, and in case of lack of such availability also by indoor treatment units...
Recent development dynamics of urban centers forced administrations to deal more frequently with problems linked to the inability of traditional sewer systems to manage rainwater in a sustainable and effective manner. Currently, several laws require compliance with the quantitative and qualitative stormwater limits to be discharged into watercourse...
Recognizing greywater as a relevant secondary source of water and nutrients represents an important chance for the sustainable management of water resource. In the last two decades, many studies analysed the environmental, economic, and energetic benefits of the reuse of greywater treated by nature-based solutions (NBS). This work reviews existing...
Treatment wetlands (TWs) have shown good capacity in dye removal from textile wastewater. However, the high hydraulic retention times (HRTs) required by these solutions and the connected high area requirements, remain a big drawback towards the application of TWs for dye treatment at full scale. Aerated TWs are interesting intensified solutions tha...
In the beverage industry, wine and beer are two of the most popular and widely consumed products worldwide. Their production, however, is related to the generation of large wastewater volumes with high contents of various pollutants. Hence, their proper treatment and management is necessary in order to protect the effluent receiving water bodies. C...
Olive Mill Wastewater (OMW) represents a significant environmental threat in all olive producing countries, mainly in the Mediterranean basin such as Italy, Greece, Tunisia and Spain, which cover almost 78% of the global olive oil production. The specific characteristics of OMW (dark color, strong smell, acid pH, high salinity, high content of phen...
Urban runoff negatively impacts the receiving streams and different solutions have been proposed in literature to limit the effect of urbanization on the water balance. These solutions suggest to manage urban runoff in order to switch from a post-development river hydrograph (high peak and short duration) back again to a pre-development hydrograph...
French Reed Bed (FRB) is a particular constructed wetland (CW) solution which receives raw wastewater. Data from the full-scale FRB wastewater treatment plant of Castelluccio di Norcia (center of Italy) were collected to show the FRB capability to minimize the operational and management (O&M) costs. The system was designed to treat wastewater varia...
Constructed wetlands (CWs) subjected to variable loads present a series of challenges for designers and researchers. Classical design approaches (e.g. rule of thumbs or first-order kinetic model) are not suited to properly estimate the removal efficiencies of CWs under varying flows. The internal removal processes of CWs are expected to be influenc...
Constructed wetlands (CWs) subjected to variable loads present a series of challenges for designers and researchers. Classical design approaches (e.g. rule of thumbs or first-order kinetic model) are not suited to properly estimate the removal efficiencies of CW under varying flows. The internal removal processes of CWs are expected to be influence...
Wastewater management is included in one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 6 is dedicated to water and sanitation and sets out to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all". SDG 6 expands the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focus on drinking water and basic sanitation to now cover the enti...
The average organic and hydraulic loads that Constructed Wetlands (CWs) receive are key parameters for their adequate long-term functioning. However, over their lifespan they will inevitably be subject to either episodic or sustained overloadings. Despite that the consequences of sustained overloading are well known (e.g., clogging), the threshold...
A two stages vertical flow treatment wetlands system (French Reed Beds) was realised in 2012–13 for the Orhei's town in Moldova. The treatment system occupies a total area of about 5 ha and operates in cold climate conditions during winter, with air temperature below −20 °C. The first two years (2013–2015) of treatment performances for this system...
Swine wastewater management is often affected by two main issues: a too high volume for optimal reuse as a fertilizer and a too high strength for an economically sustainable treatment by classical solutions. Hence, an innovative scheme has been tested to treat swine wastewater, combining a low cost anaerobic reactor upflow anaerobic sludge blanket...
Forecasting the effects on the river ecosystem of fl ood protection works: an approach based on IFF
Regione Lombardia needs a multi-objective decision supporting tool to assess fl ood protection projects. The tool is expected to compare
advantages and disadvantages of different projects, taking into account people safety, natural geomorphological p...
Evidence on the efficiency of horizontal flow constructed wetlands (HF CWs) in treating dairy wastewater in the Mediterranean region is reported, showing results from the 3 year long monitoring of a HF CW treatment plant situated in southern Italy. The HF CW treats a mixture of different wastewaters produced by a dairy farm (dairy, milking, milk co...
Horizontal flow constructed wetlands (HF CWs) have shown a good efficiency in the treatment of highly variable influent loads (e.g. touristic facilities, stormwater). However, recent studies have highlighted the possibilities of HF CW failure in treatment of high sudden loads. In order to limit excessive overestimation of the required surface area...
This paper describes a pilot installation of a green wall treating greywater from an office building in Pune, Maharashtra State (NaWaTech project). The pilot installation is located at the main entrance of the state agency responsible for water supply and sanitation. The experimental analysis is in two phases. First phase analysed the results from...
Three sampling campaigns have been done in 2014–2015 in order to temporally characterize CSOs quality and quantity during representative and seasonal-specific rain events, and to estimate the ecosystem service of a CSO-CW located in Northern Italy in terms of water quality improvement. The adoption of an on-site treatment by Constructed Wetlands fo...
High methane (CH4) fluxes emitted from paddy fields strongly contribute to the accumulation of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, compromising the eco-compatibility of one of the most important world foods. A strong link exists between infiltration rates of irrigation water and CH4 emissions. Since depth to the groundwater table affects infiltra...
This paper shows different examples from different countries (Italy, India, Tanzania) of green architectural solutions (green wall, green roof, roof wetland) in which water (rain and treated greywater) are reused as a resource, in order to reduce the use of drinking water for activities not needing a high quality of water.
Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas and the huge CH4 fluxes emitted from paddy fields can prejudice the eco-compatibility of rice cultivation. CH4 production in submerged rice crops is known to be highly influenced by water temperature. Hence, lowering ponding water temperature (LPWT) could be an option to mitigate CH4 emissions from paddy env...
Although horizontal flow constructed wetlands (HF CWs) are usually subjected to unsteady loads in real application, the modelling of HF CW response to time-variable loads has been scarcely studied in literature yet. The aim of this study is to test the capability of HYDRUS-CWM1 to simulate the behavior of HF CWs subjected to unsteady loads. Hence,...
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are bioelectrochemical systems able to generate electricity from wetland soils, including paddies, exploiting the microbial decomposition of organic matter. Additionally, MFCs can also be applied as a novel mitigation strategy for emissions of methane (CH4) from paddy fields. The MFC efficiency in reducing CH4 fluxes is...
Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas that is emitted from paddy fields, and the large CH4 fluxes represent a worldwide issue for the rice production eco-compatibility. In this work a model is proposed to investigate the role of water flows on CH 4 emissions from flooded paddy soils. The model is based on a system of partial differential mass ba...
Questions
Questions (7)
Dear all,
I'm searching literature data about the amount of leachate released by a stationary press of a transfer station for MSW.
Thanks in advance
I should need to have a rough estimation of potential pollutant load driven by a first flush, function of impervious surface and dry period.
Thanks in advance
Hi,
Does anyone know the COD (or carbon content) of grape marc?
Thanks
I'm trying to model the unsaturated hydraulic behavior of a highly permeable (gravel) constructed wetland (CW) via a finite element approach. For the characteristics of the system, I need to start my simulation with an almost empty CW. This leads to a lot of trouble in the inflow portion, due to very steep pressure gradients, which obliges me to use a very very short time step (therefore, very long simulations). I've tried different mesh refinements (triangular, quadratic with diagonal, very coarse or very fine mesh densities) near the inlet region without good results.
So, if anyone has had some experiences with similar studies, any advice could be very useful.
Does anyone know if some studies exist on the possible iron or manganese toxicity of rice plant driven by the addition of electron acceptors to paddy soil in order to mitigate methane emissions?
I've developed a process-based model for methane emissions from paddy fields, which models the interaction among hydraulic, bio-geochemistry, and plant-root affecting methane production, oxidation and emissions.
In the future, I would like to implement a model able to simulate the effect of methane emission mitigation techniques on plant eco-physiology (e.g. water, temperature, nutrient stresses).
To follow the similar approach of my current model, I would prefer a process-based model instead of classical agronomic ones; i.e. something similar to the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (SPAC) models for transpiration and photosynthesis.
Unfortunately, a similar model is strongly related to physiology, a topic out of my knowledge to develop it alone.
So, does anyone know if anything similar exists or if it is only a crazy idea? I've made a little literature research without results.
Hi everyone, I would like to have a measure of the hydraulic conductivity of graphite felt, in order to investigate the anode effect on the infiltration flow within paddy soil.
