By Adriana Romero (Cetaqua)
CETAQUA, water technology center, is a public-private partnership model dedicated to developing technologies and solutions to create a sustainable, safe and accessible water cycle for all, taking into account local needs and the benefit of the communities. Biofactory and Resource Recovery is one of the key areas, which is focused on helping to transition WWTPs into biofactories, where valuable resources and products can be obtained through the application of circular economy strategies. As shown in the scheme, one of the three pillars of this transition is based on water reuse, along with by-product production and valorization, and energy production and recovery.
Figure 1: Biofactory scheme for water cycle facilities and value chains connected to the environment
LIFE Conquer aims to provide a cost-effective solution for Water Reclamation Plants that allows the reuse of water for urban and agricultural uses, contributing to transforming the facilities treating polluted wastewater into biofactories. The circularity of the technical solution proposed goes further. Nutrients from polluted water contribute to fertilizing the irrigated plants and crops and are prevented from being discharged to and causing eutrophication in water bodies, as they currently are within conventional water treatments. Also, while existent
reclaimed water production technologies generate brines that end up being treated in conventional WWTPs, LIFE Conquer solution includes a brine valorization train to produce a valuable product that is used in the water cycle, which is sodium hypochlorite used as a water disinfectant.
Along with the technical innovation, LIFE Conquer will allow injecting the produced reclaimed water in Murcia City’s Urban Irrigation Network, implementing a solution that improves water at a real scale in a territory that is one of the most affected by water stress in Spain and Europe. The replicability of the business model developed for the Murcia case study to other European regions is also a critical part of the project. LIFE Conquer is a key project for CETAQUA water reclamation roadmap implementation, showing the alignment of CETAQUA’s mission and its compromise with European Union policies towards Sustainable Development within the water cycle. Furthermore, this strategic line of action is reinforced at CETAQUA by a set of publicly funded projects, such as LIFE REMINE, LIFE WARRIOR and H2020 B-Water Smart, that synergize together to address the present and the future of urban and industrial wastewater reuse from the local needs to the European scenery