The Eurecat technology centre is coordinating the Life Infusion project which seeks to demonstrate and validate a new system for purifying wastewater from the treatment of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste on a pilot scale. The aim is to recover resources such as biogas, nutrients, organic fertilisers and reclaimed water and also to reduce its environmental impact in a circular economy approach.
The system will use a process combining several biological treatment and filtration technologies to demonstrate “the environmental, technical and economic feasibility of recovering high-value resources available in this wastewater,” says Xavier Martínez Lladó, director of Eurecat’s Water, Air and Soil Unit.
The project is looking to enhance current treatment of the liquid digestate generated by municipal organic waste treatment by rolling out an array of technological processes to recover the nutrients, energy and water in these waste effluents. The organic matter will be turned into biogas, which can be purified to biomethane and has applications as biofuel for vehicles, fertilisers for agriculture, and reclaimed water which can be used for agricultural irrigation or in industrial processes.
The system will be validated at the Ecoparc waste management centres in Montcada i Reixac, Barcelona, and at the Cogersa facilities in Gijón, Asturias.
“This innovative treatment approach is designed to be extrapolated on a real scale and replicable for other waste management plants,” says Carme Bosch, the Infusion project’s technical coordinator and head of Eurecat’s Soil and Groundwater strand.
The project (LIFE19 ENV/ES/000283) is funded by the European Union under the LIFE programme and has a €3,119,601 budget. The project consortium is made up of Eurecat, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), Aqualia, Cogersa, Ebesa (Ecoparc del Besòs), the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA), Detricon and AMIU Gènova, organisations from Spain, Belgium and Italy.
