My research area involves the removal of emerging contaminants such as microplastics and engineered nanoparticles, from the groundwater zone. The research deals with the interactions of different contaminants with soil, natural colloids such as clay in the subsurface, and other pollutants. The study contributes to a better understanding of the fate and transport of pollutants in natural systems and helps to formulate the development of strategies for environmental risk assessment and groundwater remediation.

To achieve this goal, various contaminant transport experiments and numerical simulations were conducted at various scales, such as the pore-scale, column scale, and sandbox scale, which ultimately provides an understanding of the field scale processes. The emerging contaminants selected are microplastics, zinc oxide nanoparticles, and copper oxide nanoparticles, which have widespread industrial and pharmaceutical applications.  The results show that in the presence of more than one contaminant, different interaction mechanisms, such as competition for the retention sites and heteroaggregation, take place, thus affecting the fate of these contaminants. The transport of contaminants is more complex at the larger scales due to the physical and chemical heterogeneity. The experiments conducted at the pore-scale give a visual representation of the processes observed at the larger scales by focusing on the individual soil grains.  Further, the modeling of the contaminant interactions predicts its fate and transport in the groundwater zone and helps in planning safe distances for drinking water sources