Akram Alshawabkeh, EREM2013 Chair
Welcome to the 2013 International Symposium on Electrokinetic Remediation (EREM 2013). After more than a decade of successful EREM Symposiums around the world, we are very excited to host the 2013 symposium in Boston, Massachusetts. EREM symposiums started in Albi, France in 1997 and since then have been held twelve times but only in Europe and Asia, specifically Lyngby, Denmark (1999); Karlsruhe, Germany (2001); Mol, Belgium (2003); Ferrara, Italy (2005); Vigo, Spain (2007); Seoul, South Korea (2008); Lisbon, Portugal (2009), Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2010); Utrecht, The Netherlands (2011) and most recently in Sapporo, Japan (2012).
Contamination of soil, water, sediments, concrete, wood, brick and other construction materials continues to be a major threat to human health globally. Although many of the contamination sources tend to be from decades of improper disposal of waste, recent extreme incidents also generate extensive contamination. Examples include the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, which both produced widespread contamination. This is in addition to detection of emerging contaminants in water resources.
Technologies for remediation of contaminated materials have been under continuous development, validation and implementation for almost three decades. Due to difficulties in locating contamination in the subsurface – and challenges in addressing the complex and heterogeneous physical, chemical, biological and thermal subsurface conditions – only a small fraction of contaminated sites have been cleaned and contamination is still a critical issue.
Electrokinetic and electrochemical processes provide valuable and versatile tools to manage and remediate contaminated materials. Significant progress continues to be made and the annual EREM Symposium provides a venue to present and discuss recent developments in electrokinetic and electrochemical remediation to help us face the major environmental contamination challenges everywhere.
Northeastern University
The symposium will be held at Northeastern University in Boston, one of America’s oldest cities. Northeastern University’s College of Engineering is proud to host EREM2013, which links directly with ongoing research in the energy, environmental, health and security fields.
We welcome you and look forward to seeing you in Boston.
Warm wishes,
Akram Alshawabkeh
Organizing Committee Chair