Michelle Crimi ‘95, a professor and the David Spatz ‘68 Endowed Chair for the Director of Engineering and Management at Clarkson University, and her research team, have been awarded one of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) Projects of the Year Awards.
The awards were announced virtually at the 2020 Virtual DoD Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and ESTCP Symposium held in November and December. These awards recognize scientific advances and technological solutions to some of DoD’s most significant environmental and installation energy challenges.
Crimi’s research team received the Environmental Restoration ESTCP Project of the Year Award for their work titled: “Demonstration and Validation of the Horizontal Reactive Media Treatment Well (HRX Well®) for Managing Contaminant Plumes in Complex Geological Environments.”
She has been working with Arcadis, a global engineering firm and the project’s lead, on the development of their patented horizontal wells packed with a solid form of treatment media to create an underground pathway through which contaminated water flows in and clean water flows out.
The Department of Defense says in their release about the project, “[This] ESTCP-funded project validated the horizontal reactive media treatment well (HRX Well®), an in situ remediation approach that demonstrated a per-well hydraulic treatment zone width of 50 ft and an average mass discharge reduction of about 1.8 grams per day of contaminants. The HRX technology captures and passively treats large volumes of groundwater in situ by using the “flow-focusing” behavior created by the strong well-to-aquifer permeability contrast. The HRX Well® significantly reduces life-cycle costs compared to current alternative technologies, as it requires little long-term maintenance while controlling contaminant migration and mass discharge.”
Crimi has spent her professional career developing technologies for effectively treating chemical pollutants in groundwater. Most of her research is funded by the Department of Defense and other military and governmental agencies.
For more details on the project, click here.
