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National R&D

ROSM

Robotic Oil Spill Mitigation

Principal Investigator
Group Leader

Ana Paula Mucha has a Degree in Aquatic Sciences (1993), a MSc in Ecology, Management and Modelling of Aquatic Resources (1997) and a PhD in Aquatic Sciences (2002). She has a research position at CIIMAR, University of Porto, Portugal, being member of the Board of Directors and the Principal Investigator of the ECOBIOTEC Team (Bioremediation and Ecosystems Functioning).

Also, she is an Invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto. She focuses her research on the relation between microorganisms and contaminants, aiming the development of bioremediation technologies for ecosystems recovery and environmental sustainability. She also explores the microbe-plant associations for the development of nature-based solutions for water management, and the microbe-animal interactions to increase environmental sustainability of aquaculture production.

She authored ca. 90 SCI papers including high profile journals in the field of Marine and Environmental Sciences. She has been involved in multiple regional, national and international projects, and presently coordinates CIIMAR participation in the European project “BIOSYSMO – BIOremediation systems exploiting SYnergieS for improved removal of Mixed pOllutants” (GAP-101060211). Also she coordinates the project “Ocean3R – Reduce pressures, restore and regenerate the NW-Portuguese ocean and waters” (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000064), and the Research Line 4 (Marine biobanks as tools for marine biotechnology) in the structured program of R&D ATLANTIDA – Platform for the monitoring of the North Atlantic Ocean and tools for the sustainable exploitation of the marine resources” (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000040). In addition, she has been involved as supervisor in several national and European Master and PhD programmes, and presently she co-coordinates the FCUP team responsible for the M2ex-European Joint Doctorate “Exploiting metal-microbe applications to expand the circular economy” (European Union; Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 861088).

RESEARCH GROUPS:

No results found.

Oil spills are catastrophic events for the marine ecosystems. Due to increasing number of gas and oil off-shore explorations, the risk of having oil spills has increase dramatically in the last few years. Therefore, to develop Eco-friendly technology that can cope with this problem, and allow a safer and immediate combat when an oil spill event occurs is something that the scientific community should address. 

The ROSM – Robotic Oil Spill Mitigation addresses the research and development of technology that allows to detect and mitigate oil spills in marine environment. The ROSM project envisions to advance the state-of-the-art in two distinct scientific areas: 
(i) Development of a new biotechnological tool that takes advantage of the highly effectiveness of native microbial consortia to bioremediate oil spills, and by doing that we will potentiate microbial survival and bioremediation efficiency in the affected areas, while avoiding environmental issues derived from the introduction of non-native organisms. In addition, we intend to develop an integrated and holistic solution for bioremediation, including a library of native microbial consortia for bioremediation, the optimization of production of selected cooperative consortia, and cocktails of nutrients to stimulate the consortia activity.
(ii) For this biotechnology to be effective, one must use vehicles (carriers) that can transport the native microbial consortia, but at the same time be able to operate in hazard remote areas in an autonomous manner. Detect and inspect the most troublesome areas to be able to contain and release the bioremediation agents load in a more effective manner. To do so in ROSM, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Surface Vehicles are used to carry and release the bioremediation agents. The autonomous systems are able to autonomously detect and navigate through the oil spills based on their sensing mechanisms in order to effectively solve the problem.
The ROSM project will use an autonomous surface vehicle, capable of operating in oil spill areas. Developing perception methodologies and algorithms that allows the surface vehicle to act as a home-relay for VTOL take-off and landing. The autonomous vehicles will use their pose and attitude sensors to geo-reference and mark the oil spills areas to the humans safety operators, releasing the capsules with cm accurate positioning.
To demonstrate and access the performance of the proposed scientific approach, different components will be tested both in laboratory and in extensive field trials. A fully demonstration trial in quasi real scenario is envisioned to test the system.

 

Project sheet here

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