The first part of this thesis is focused on the remediation of waters contaminated with persistent organic pollutants, in particular pharmaceutical products. Alternative technologies such as the advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), which based on the generation of hydroxyl radicals OH, were applied to the degradation and/or mineralization of a pollutant drug, ibuprofen, in aqueous medium. We chose this pollutant as a model molecule to study due to its large volume of prescription and to its proved presence in the effluents of sewage plants and natural waters. The main objective of this work was the optimization of operational parameters of the applied AOPs. The concentration of H2O2 and Fe2+ reagents ratio to generate hydroxyl radicals for photo-Fenton process, and supporting electrolyte concentration (and the nature) and the applied current for both electro-Fenton and anodic oxidation processes. The oxidation and mineralization kinetics of the ibuprofen were studied and the absolute rate constant for the oxidative degradation of ibuprofen was determined by the competition kinetic method, being 3,84 109 M-1s-1. Toxicity tests of the drug solutions during the anodic oxidation process were carried out by the Microtox method. Our results show that these methods are effective for the degradation of this pharmaceutical product from water. Ibuprofen was completely degraded and the organic matter was almost completely mineralized after the application of these processes. The second part of the thesis includes an experimental study of the physical properties (at different scales) and the mechanical behavior of basaltic rocks. We studied the mechanical behavior and the failure modes of a porous basalt from Azores. Results were acquired under triaxial compression experiments on water saturated samples at room temperature. This basalt presented two modes of deformation. At low confining pressure, the samples exhibited a brittle mechanical behavior and a localized deformation (shear band). For higher confining pressure, this basalt showed a ductile behavior and localized compactions (compaction bands). The mechanical data allows us to plot the full yield surface for the porous basalt. The quantification of the physical properties of two types of basalts from the Galapagos was performed at room temperature and pressure. In order to study the effect of cracking on the physical properties of these basalts, samples were subjected to thermal treatments to induce thermal crack damage. Finally for the less porous basalt, measures of wave velocities under the pressure at which it is subjected in depth were acquired. The obtained results and the following application of models with them allow quantifying the density of initial cracks and of those induced by thermal treatments, as well as quantifying the aspect ratio of cracks. The studied physical properties led to better understand the role of the pore network of the rock in these physical properties. This laboratory study was necessary for the interpretation of data collected in situ by seismic refraction method
