AquaNES intends to catalyze innovations in water and waste water treatment processes and management through improved combinations of natural and engineered components. The project focuses on 13 demonstration sites in Europe, India and Israel covering a representative range of regional, climatic, and hydro geological conditions. Among the demonstrated solutions are natural treatment processes such as bank filtration (BF), managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and constructed wetlands (CW) plus engineered pre- and post-treatment options.

The AquaNES consortium (see partners) assembles at partnership of (waste)water utilities,  SMEs and industries as well as high level academic partners and research institutes from seven European countries, Israel and India, representing a good balance along a technology innovation value chain.

Our SME’s and industries provide existing and new pre- or post-treatment technologies, monitoring devices or software tools which are integrated by water utilities in combined natural and engineered treatment schemes to demonstrate and validate the treatment efficacy of the combined system. The close collaboration with partnering water utilities will speed-up the deployment of successfully operating combined treatment processes.

 

AquaNES specific objectives are:

• to demonstrate the benefits of post-treatment options such as membranes, activated carbon and ozonation after bank filtration for the production of safe drinking water
• to validate the treatment and storage capacity of soil-aquifer systems in combination with oxidative pre-treatments
• to demonstrate the combination of constructed wetlands with different technical post- or pre-treatment options (ozone or bioreactor systems) as a waste water treatment option
• to evidence reductions in operating costs and energy consumption
• to test a robust risk assessment framework for cNES
• to deliver design guidance for cNES informed by industrial or near-industrial scale experiences
• to identify and profile new market opportunities in Europe and overseas for cNES

 

BDS’s main involvement is in work package 4 (WP4): Risk Assessment and Water Quality Control. This work package will design and demonstrate an efficient quantitative water quality assessment framework for cNES that is easy to use and allows integration of innovative monitoring approaches. Modules will be designed using a set of monitoring systems for a variety of emerging water quality issues such as fecal contamination, antibiotic resistance genes and biological effects of complex mixtures of chemicals. The effectiveness of cNES to remove the monitored biological and chemical contamination will be demonstrated.

The specific goals of WP4 are to:

• Design a water quality assessment framework for cNES
• Implement innovative monitoring modules to demonstrate cNES treatment efficacy:
  – An innovative sensor to monitor fecal contamination
  – An innovative monitoring system to assess antibiotic resistance genes
  – Quantitative CALUX bioassays to monitor endocrine disrupting/toxic compounds
• Visualization techniques and integrate results of multiple monitoring tools in an• Demonstrate data-processing and -vis open access software based water quality reporting tool
• Demonstrate its use in selected demonstration sites from WP1-3 and derive an interactive water quality assessment
  tool to be embedded in the decision support platform in WP6.

 

BDS’s main tasks in the project are:

• Implementation of a range of CALUX bioassays in demonstration sites.
  Adaptation of monitoring technologies to needs of combined natural engineered treatment systems. Development of tailored monitoring programmes. In that frame We interact with other WPs (particularly WP6) for data exchange and –interpretation,
• Participation in the exploitation plan development for its bioassays and dissemination activities (exhibit at fairs, contribute on conferences)

 

Visit www.aquanes.eu for more information.

 

The AquaNes Project has received funding from the Europian Union’s Horizon 2020 research innovation programme under grant agreement no. 689450