Research at the GR-CEL focuses on the following areas:
Micropollutants: Our research mainly focuses on the study of the origin and the fate of organic and inorganic micropollutants in the natural environment and in engineered aquatic systems.
Nano-/micro-plastics: The research activities of the CEL in the field of the plastic pollution focus on the development of sampling, detection and quantification methods of micro- and nano-plastics, the study of the fate plastic particles in the environment and their interactions with organic and inorganic pollutants. The CEL is also conduction research on the impact of plastic and tire road wear particules on living organisms. The laboratory is equipped with sampling devices and analytical systems such as Manta Trawl, sieving systems, ATR-FTIR spectrometer and microscopes specially dedicated to the research on micro- and nano-plastics.
Environmental analytical chemistry: The CEL develops extraction and analytical methods for the detection and quantification of organic and inorganic micro-pollutants in water, soils, sediments and biological tissues using cutting edge instruments such as LC-ICP-MS/MS, LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS.
Environmental microbiology:The research activities carried out at CEL in the field of environmental microbiology deal with the remediation of contaminated sites with organic and inorganic pollutants, the recovery of rare earth elements from electronic waste, the development and the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment and the characterization of bacterial communities in water, soils and sediments samples.