Water Pollution Control and Reclamation
With focus on three innovative aspects—the reservoir eutrophication control and innovative simulation research, the migration, transformation and modeling of emerging contaminants in water environment, the point source pollution control and resource utilization, this research branch pays specific attention to 4 basic research platforms, namely the test analysis platform for emerging contaminants, the biological and ecological treatment platform for organic pollutants, the membrane separation technology and development of functional membrane materials platform as well as the modeling and simulation platform for environmental contaminant migration.
Air Pollution Control and Regional Air Quality Modeling
Take the construction of the research platform for monitoring simulation and coordination control technology of combined air pollution, as well as the background of combined air pollution and climate change into consideration, SESE spares no effort to build up a research system for the simulation, evaluation, and early warning of air quality. Pivoting on key technologies like emission reduction of combined contaminants including PM 2.5, heavy metal, etc., and CO2 capture, SESE has achieved unprecedented breakthroughs in multiple contaminants coordination control technology, efficient energy-saving and contaminant-control technology, efficient by-product utilization technology, and so on.
Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recovery
The research targets at the disposal and utilization of e-waste, sludge, and residential waste. In regard to e-waste, SESE aims to develop integrated multifunctional key technologies and corresponding equipment, both of which have independent IPR (intellectual property rights), through its emphasis on disassembly, environmentally friendly disposal, and thorough utilization with high added value. As for municipal sludge, studies on sludge stabilization for thermophilic aerobic digestion, anaerobic bioaugmentation technology, grit removal pre-treatment for sludge, solidification pre-treatment technology of sludge before landfill, and so on have been widely carried out. To residential waste, the overall objectives are to develop sustainable landfill methods less influenced by circumstances on the one hand, and to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases created by the landfill to eliminate the secondary pollution on the other hand. Meanwhile, hydro-thermal reaction is made full use of to investigate the utilization issue of organic waste.
Soil and Ground-water Contamination Reclamation
Research involves the identification of, monitoring evaluation of, and remediation criteria for site pollutant source, the relationships between ecological environment of polluted site and human health, the migration, transformation and numerical simulation of multi-media contaminants in soil, and the integration of typical remediation technology of polluted site and relevant demonstration, etc. As a result, a variety of remediation technologies are taken into consideration such as those for soil stabilization, microbe, chemical oxidation, groundwater P&T and PRB, the integration of polluted soil and groundwater.
Environmental Functional Materials
In this branch, research mainly concerns the photo-catalytic and photoelectron-catalytic pollution control, the noise pollution control and equipment, the electrocatalysis pollution control, the energy technology and functional materials, the pollutants separation and adsorption material, environment conscious materials, and technologies relevant to what mentioned above. All these efforts are devoted to tackle theoretical and technological issues in the efficient utilization of solar energy, the efficiency and low energy consumption for the difficult degradable organic pollutants, the traffic and industry noise control, which further serves to provide innovative theories, methods and techniques for area pollution control and resource utilization and to conduct engineering demonstration.
Resource and Environmental Management and Climate Change Mitigation
The research direction is characteristic of inter-discipline as it makes full use of circular economy, industrial ecology, energy analysis, environmental and energy economics, geographical information system and other related theories to investigate regional circular economy model, eco-industrial park design and management, regional resource accounting and efficiency evaluation, waste management, regional energy management and climate change mitigation policies.
Clean and Renewable Energy
With pivots on the development and exploitation of clean and renewable energy, as well as new energy, research on exploration and application covers CO2 conversion, conversion and utilization of biomass and waste, photo-catalytic materials synthesis, photo-catalytic water splitting for hydrogen production, novel solar cell preparation, electrochemical energy storage materials. All these are aimed to construct an influential research platform characteristic of innovation in energy field around the world.
Bio-toxicology and Environmental Health
With target at the relationships between the effects of contaminants on ecological security and human health, SESE explores neurotoxicological effects as well as its mechanism and elimination technology of new environmental chemicals like emerging contaminants, nanoparticle with the help of high-throughput screening optical analysis, transcriptome analysis, big data computing, etc. By such deep exploration, theoretical and methodological models for environment and health are expected to be built up to serve for national environment management.