Water Treatment & Recovery

Capabilities

TECHNOLOGIES

Conventional and innovative technologies are applied both for urban and industrial water treatment, in centralized and decentralized systems, for the removal of regulated (organic matter and nutrients) and unregulated (emerging contaminants) compounds. The aim is not only to treat water, but also to reuse it, recover value-added compounds and reduce the impact of treatment systems (surface area, energy consumption, etc). Examples of applications

1. Treatment of sewage from an office building using the anammox process. 
2. Treatment of different types of industrial wastewater using aerobic granular biomass technology 

MICROBIOLOGY

• Identification of microorganisms active in biological processes.
• Microbial pathogens present.
• Antimicrobial resistances.
• Nano-toxicology.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

•  Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Examples of applications: Evaluation of new technologies and their integration into the treatment line in urban wastewater plants 

• Energy efficiency

ENERWATER Project (www.enerwater.eu) for the development of a methodology for the definition, measurement and diagnosis of the energy efficiency of a WWTP. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.03.130, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136642

• Techno-economic evaluation

Examples of publications: Techno-environmental and economic assessment of color removal strategies from textile wastewater (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169721), How decentralized treatment can contribute to the symbiosis between environmental protection and resource recove (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151485)

• Modelling