- The initiative, called REvivED Water and made up of ten partners from six EU countries, combines the latest technologies in electrodialysis and reverse osmosis for water treatment.
- The four-year project includes the development of a pilot plant located at the Burriana wastewater treatment plant, which will operate until mid-2020.
The Burriana City Council and FACSA, as part of their commitment to research and innovation applied to the management of the integrated water cycle, are actively participating in a pioneering desalination project in Europe that will allow the use of the latest technologies to convert seawater into drinking water.
Specifically, the initiative, called REvivED Water, investigates the combination of cutting-edge direct and reverse electrodialysis techniques with reverse osmosis treatments to desalinate seawater. This system, in addition to recovering a greater quantity of water, increases the energy efficiency of the process, allowing for the production of high-quality desalinated water at a lower cost. This is made possible by the indirect reuse of treated water from the wastewater treatment plant.
In this regard, ten partners from six EU countries, including companies, research centers, and universities, will be responsible for developing these technologies and implementing them in a pilot plant set up at the Burriana wastewater treatment plant. Subsequently, in a second phase, the developed technology will be validated in a real-world plant. This second phase will be carried out by FACSA.
“One of the most interesting aspects of this project is that it allows us to transfer the latest desalination technologies to a real-world environment, in order to obtain solutions that address global problems such as water scarcity and make desalination more viable, both in terms of energy efficiency and water recovery,” explained Javier Climent, head of R&D projects at FACSA.
For his part, Bruno Arnandis, Councilor for the Environment in the Burriana City Council, stated that “we continue to make progress in implementing projects that we understand to be both beneficial and necessary to respect our physical environment. Furthermore, it is gratifying to see how the companies that hold concessions for municipal services, along with the large number of companies and entities that have shown interest in collaborating on these types of projects, continue to get involved in initiatives that seek to optimize natural resources without harming the environment, while minimizing any potential impact on it.”.
This research and innovation project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program, allows for the investigation of new desalination solutions to provide good quality drinking water to the population in a global context where the balance between the demand for this resource and its availability has reached a critical level in numerous regions of the planet.
