Progress Meeting 2, Milestone 1

On January 29, 2024, Progress Meeting 2, Milestone 1 was held at UJEP. The event was provided in a hybrid form: altogether 26 persons participated in the event including 17 persons connected virtually and 9 persons attended UJEP in person, room No. 525. The participants represented all teams involved.

At the introduction prof. Valentina Pidlisnyuk, NDP informed about changes in the project framework since the Progress meeting 1: Prof. Tobias Zschunke and team (IPM) voluntarily resigned from the project; the University of Zagreb, Croatia with leadership of Prof. Zeljka Zgorelec joined as a linkage institution.

In the first part of the meeting, the Leaders from the participating institutions delivered reports Illustrating progress during December 2023-January 2024. In the second part of the event, NDP Valentina Pidlisnyuk overviewed the state with the overall implementation of the project’s tasks that have to be accomplished by the end of Mil1.

In particular, the team from the TVHNPU presented a summary report (Dr Andriy Hertz) with supplemented reports from the young researchers: Dr. Oksana Horyn (ecotoxicology research) and Victor Markiv (chemical research) related characteristics of two tested industrial biochar. A team from LNPU (Dr Vitalii Stadnik) presented evaluated results (soil and biomass analysis) from the site in Popovaca, Croatia, where the miscanthus plantation was established at the landfill, former military soil. This contaminated biomass will be used for conversion by the physic-chemical treatment. Dr Tatyana Stefanovska (NULES) introduced results on the evaluation of the soil nematode communities at the field in Vorzel, Ukraine. She informed participants about the outcome of the working meeting with Diplomat Ladislav Horak, the Czech Embassy in Ukraine. Dr Horenovsky made a short intervention on threats related to the pilot production of biochar. Dr. Mariya Marinova informed about progress in phytoremediation research at RMC. The activities of the UJEP team were presented by Prof. Valentina Pidlisnyuk, supplemented by the special reports delivered by PhD student Hana Burdona (properties of Miscanthus biochar produced from Miscanthus waste at the Lab scale), Dr Karim Al Souki (evaluation of first-year research on Carbon soil), and PhD student Katrien Boonen (the first step in creation the approach on LCA). Thereafter the representatives from the linkage institutions Dr. Aigerim Mamirova and Prof. Zeljka Zgorelec made short interventions.

At the second part of the event Mgr. Blanka Cerna informed about the state of the financial reports and pointed out the request for submitting the teams’ financial reports to Financial Report 1. Prof. Valentina Pidlisnyuk overviewed the progress in implementation goals in Mil1. Generally, the planned activities are implemented in accordance with the schedule, activities in WP 2 related to the testing of industrial biochar are ahead of the time; activities related the biochar production at the pilot scale are delayed. The latest will be improved by establishing biochar production in Ukraine (NULES and TVHNPU), the preparatory work has been started.

Altogether the following output was received (December 2023-January 2024):

2 manuscripts were submitted to the IF journal;

One manuscript submitted earlier is under review.

1 proceeding of the conference was published.

UJEP has started to green the education programmer, including in the project’s related topics.

Prof. Valentina Pidlisnyuk explained the requests for the Progress Report 1 expected to be submitted by teams to UJEP by February 29, 2024. The next Progress Meeting 3 within Milestone 2 is scheduled for April 2024.