• Project Leader: Dr. Marius-Mihai ZAHARIA
• Funding programme: Human Resources
• Subprogram: Postdoctoral research projects
• Contract Authority: Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISDCI)
• Project: PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0286
• Project title: Wastewater Heavy ion metals decontamination with Ion Exchange Resins: TARNiţa closed mine pollution case
• Acronym: WHIERTARN (Click Here)
• Project duration: 01.09.2020 – 31.08.2022 
• Budget: 246 950 lei

          The rationale for the research is that mine tailing and metals pollution of waters which is a major problem globally, and it has been identified as a priority research task for the forest polluted areas in Romania. The goal of this project is to determine feasibility and efficacy of remediation methods based on ion exchange resins with high affinity toward heavy metals on Tarnita polluted area. Risk assessments at Tarnita site reveal that metal contamination is the greatest risk to human and forest health. The proposed research is the synthesis of ion exchange resins based on acrylic copolymers and the tuning the resins properties to obtain selective and supersorbent materials for remove heavy metal ions from wastewaters (Tarnița mine contaminated case), applying/learning different reliable and modern methods for investigation of the sorbent and sorbate characteristics. Measurements will be addressed to the determination of metal concentrations in waters. Results from this project will be disseminated in many ways (international/national conferences, ISI papers and project web site).