AquaSPICE

Development and implementation of digital and circular water use innovations to promote a sustainable use of water and advancing sustainability process of industries.

The AquaSPICE project aims at materialising circular water use in the European Process Industries, fostering awareness in resource-efficiency and delivering compact solutions for industrial applications, including water treatment and reuse technologies, as well as closed-loop recycling practices. The project is also developing a cyber-physical-system controller which includes a system for real-time monitoring, assessment and optimisation of water use and reuse at different interconnected levels.

The project follows a systemic approach in water management where optimal efficiency can be achieved through an adaptation of appropriate technologies and practices in different levels, from a single industrial process (unit operation), to an entire factory, to other collaborating industries (industrial symbiosis) or other sectors (domestic and/or agriculture).

The solutions promoted by the project enable and facilitate the immediate uptake, replication and up-scaling of the innovations, by providing comprehensive strategic, business and organisational plans which offer a range of well-defined solutions, suitable for various cases.

Eurecat participates in the project through its Applied Artificial Intelligence Unit which is responsible to define common data models and ontology to integrate the information, define baselines for current applied technologies and expected innovative processes for water saving and reuse, coordinate the elaboration of the real-time monitoring and control platform, and the data integration and support in AI driven tools.

On the other hand, the Water, Air and Soil Unit of Eurecat (WAS) participates in the implementation and demonstration of aerobic granular sludge for the treatment of complex and toxic wastewaters from the petrochemical industry. By this way, a suitable biological process can be implemented to treat properly the wastewater treatment from this industrial sector. The WAS Unit is also responsible of the implementation and demonstration of the application of regenerated membranes for the production of reclaimed water and achieve high water quality for in-situ application.

AquaSPICE project is formed by a consortium of 28 partners from 12 European countries and 1 associated country (Turkey).