Chemical and Environmental Engineering Group

Raffaella received in 2016 her Bachelor Degree in Chemical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino. In 2019, she graduated from both Politecnico di Torino and KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as part of the Double Degree Master Programme in Chemical Engineering. During her studies, she focused on different aspects of existing technologies and investigated new methods for their implementation. For her Master thesis, she worked on renewable energy, in particular on photovoltaics and what concerns the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells technology. Finally, in October 2019, she started her PhD studies at URJC as part of the Marie Curie European Industrial Doctorate REWATERGY. During her investigation, she has been working on optimizing a drinking water treatment for the removal of microplastics and other contaminants of emerging concerns through a membrane filtration system coupled with UV-B and UV-C LED emitters. On the one hand, after selecting the best-performing membrane, she focused on modelling the membrane fouling by microplastics to increase their removal. On the other hand, she studied the degradation kinetics of a typical pharmaceutical compound by irradiating UV LEDs at different wavelengths. Finally, she performed a life cycle sustainability assessment to compare the new treatment with conventional solutions. Passionate about social, environmental and economic sustainability, she wants to apply her knowledge in addressing global challenges like climate change and energy transition.
  • Sustainable Reactor Engineering for Applications on the Water-Energy Nexus (REWATERGY) Photo-irradiation and Adsorption based Novel Innovations for Water-treatment

    Funding : European Commission, Horizon 2020 (GA 812574)
    Start / End Years : 2019 - 2023
    URL : http://rewatergy.eu/
    Principal Investigator : Marugán Aguado, Javier
    Research Team : - Adán Delgado, Cristina - Marugán Aguado, Javier - Pablos Carro, Cristina - Perveen , Shabila - Pizzichetti , Raffaella 

      Show summary: REWATERGY is a consortium of six partners composed by 3 universities and 3 companies with a balanced participation of beneficiaries and partner organizations, academic and non-academic. All the participants are mutually involved in scientific and educational tasks, formed in several fields (chemical analysis, environmental fate, photocatalysis, material science, membrane technology and water management), sharing the interest towards environmental studies and determined to achieve the primary objective of guaranteeing access to safe water to the entire society through the formation of young scientists specialist in water treatment.


Kinetic and mechanistic analysis of membrane fouling in microplastics removal from water by dead-end microfiltration

Pizzichetti, A. R. P.; Pablos, C.; Álvarez-Fernández, C.; Reynolds, K.; Stanley, S.; Marugán, J.


Removal of diclofenac by UV-B and UV-C light-emitting diodes (LEDs) driven advanced oxidation processes (AOPs): wavelength dependence, kinetic modelling and energy consumption

Pizzichetti, R. ; Reynolds, K.; Pablos, C.; Casado, C.; Moore, E.; Stanley, S.; Marugán, J.


Effect of the Ancillary Ligand on the Performance of Heteroleptic Cu (I) Diimine Complexes as Dyes in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Franchi, D.; Leandri, V.; Pizzichetti, A.R.P.; Xu, B.; Hao, Y.; Zhang, W.; Sloboda, T.; Svanstrom, S.; Cappel, U.B.; Kloo, L.; Sun, L.; Gardner, J.M.


Evaluation of membranes performance for microplastic removal in a simple and low-cost filtration system

Pizzichetti, A.R.P.; Pablos, C.; Álvarez-Fernández, C.; Reynolds, K.; Stanley, S.; Marugán, J.


Exploring the Optical and Electrochemical Properties of Homoleptic versus Heteroleptic Diimine Copper(I) Complexes

Leandri, V.; Pizzichetti, A.R.P.; Xu, B.; Franchi,D.; Zhang, W.; Benesperi, I.; Freitag, M.; Sun, L.; Kloo, L.; Gardner, J.M.


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