The GESTOR project, an initiative led by FACSA that aims to develop an advanced platform to improve the preventive management and efficiency of urban sanitation infrastructure, has launched a pilot technique for locating infiltrations of water external to the sanitation network in a section of the Benicàssim sewer network.
The objective of this tool, which acts as a linear sensor along the entire collector, is to minimize the entry of groundwater and rainwater due to structural failures in the sewer system, one of the main problems that these infrastructures present.
This is because wastewater collectors are not designed to handle large volumes of water, which can lead to street flooding and the discharge of untreated water into the environment. Furthermore, both the increased volume and quality of wastewater requiring treatment increase energy consumption and negatively impact the capacity and efficiency of the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive this wastewater.
Testing of this new technique—developed by the partners in the GESTOR project (FACSA, ABM Serveis d'Enginyeria i Consulting SL, and the Catalan Institute for Water Research)—has been carried out over several months in the southern area of Benicàssim. The results obtained have been very positive in terms of improving the efficiency of the sanitation network, as they have enabled the detection of points where groundwater and rainwater infiltration was occurring, thus allowing for improvements in the collector's operation.
The GESTOR project has been co-financed by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the Challenges-Collaboration call of the State Program of Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to the Challenges of Society, within the framework of the State Plan of Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016.
