Environmental Aspect – January 2023: From investigation to innovation: engineering transfer aim of roundtable

Tactics to transfer environmental cleanup technologies from study and development to the field headlined the agenda of the first in-man or woman Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable (FRTR) meeting in 3 years. The celebration, which was held Nov. 8 in Washington, D.C., introduced with each other leaders from 10 federal organizations, which includes NIEHS, to focus on how they can collaborate to satisfy dangerous waste contamination cleanup targets and rising demands.

“As our remediation aims evolve and new worries occur, our precedence as federal agencies and FRTR customers is to innovate to satisfy new cleanup needs,” explained NIEHS Superfund Research System (SRP) Health and fitness Scientist Administrator Heather Henry, Ph.D., a member of the FRTR steering committee.

“For this meeting, we desired to get the men and women who are functioning in the subject to discuss about their research translation procedure, their challenges, and the novel systems they are presently applying,” she famous.

Bridging the “valley of death”

Conference attendees discussed the so-known as “valley of death” — the hole amongst systems formulated by means of federally funded analysis systems and commercialization of individuals technologies in the non-public sector.

Michael Pound, of the Naval Services Engineering Methods Command, launched some of the challenges technologies builders confront. These involve, for example, figuring out how to clear up several contaminants at the same time, making sure that discipline contractors understand the technological know-how, and securing funding to implement.

Methods to get over the valley of loss of life, identified through the conference, contain:

• Frequent communications among business, tutorial establishments, and federal know-how transfer systems to make it possible for for feed-back and thought trade early in the study method.
• Public-personal partnerships, this kind of as programs that assist scientists in obtaining industrial associates.
• Incorporating regulatory involvement and group engagement in the advancement program for new systems, as these may be crucial parts in prosperous deployment.

New systems

In the course of the assembly, FRTR member businesses offered about their various plans and technology transfer mechanisms.

“The conference helped us detect federal systems that are extra amenable to seeking out new technologies, a vital portion of the engineering transfer pathway,” Henry claimed.

A person method that specifies innovation in its mandates is the U.S. Environmental Defense Agency’s Excellent Lakes Countrywide Program Place of work (GLNPO).

Christian Bako, Ph.D., a former SRP-funded trainee who is now a venture manager at GLNPO, presented about the program’s contaminated sediment assignments. According to Bako, these jobs give prospects for FRTR organizations and other partners to collaborate to pilot and advance more powerful, reduce-price tag sediment remediation strategies in the industry.

“The system of fielding modern technologies is not a linear pipeline but alternatively a thing that usually takes ability, drive, and experience, which relies upon on owning a network of persons who can aid you deploy new remediation tactics at the suitable time,” Bako claimed.

Rising contaminants

“A widespread topic amongst presenters was that in the latest several years there has been a fast inflow of remediation technologies to handle a new obstacle, for each- and polyfluoroalkyl substances [PFAS],” claimed Laura Kammel, Ph.D., an NIEHS postdoctoral fellow who moderated a roundtable dialogue about the problems and alternatives connected to engineering transfer.

Jeffery Owens, Ph.D., of the Air Pressure Civil Engineer Heart, shared one of the challenges similar to PFAS — creating safe and sound and effective possibilities to PFAS-made up of firefighting foams. Owens and staff field analyzed non-PFAS containing foams and located that this sort of foams are not in a position to place out fires as immediately, direct to more fire burn off-again, and can be harmful when mixed with other hearth-relevant contaminants.

“While progressive systems are instrumental to the remediation of PFAS and other rising contaminants, essential steps must be taken all through the improvement course of action to ensure that these systems are protected and powerful,” Kammel explained.

“Interagency data sharing can enable stop pitfalls, aid price and general performance analyses, and accelerate commercialization of PFAS remediation systems,” Kammel continued.

The great importance of education

“The takeaway message from the conference was how vital coaching is, no matter if that is specialized education on a new technological know-how, or teaching the new technology of remedial job managers,” Henry mentioned.

Presenters discussed that remedial challenge managers, who are on the floor running cleanup tasks at harmful squander web sites, are in a unique posture to consider new systems in the subject.

“For a remedial challenge manager, knowing how and when to leverage new technologies can be extremely hard,” Bako explained.

Improving communication attempts, this sort of as revamping web sites and hosting webinars, was one method determined to transfer knowledge about new technologies and coach remediation practitioners.

Conference attendees also emphasised the worth of incentivizing applications to support match ground breaking systems to a web page and remedial project manager.