Growing population, industrialisation, modern agricultural practices, and urbanisation have increased water demand and together with that, the quantity of wastewater (WW) and greywater (GW) produced in EU and non-EU countries. Moreover, considering that hydrogen (H2) is a key priority to achieve the European Green Deal, Europe’s clean energy transition, carbon neutrality by 2050 and the global effort to implement the Paris Agreement while working towards zero pollution, a huge amount of high-quality water will be required. In order to mitigate water scarcity and decrease the high operation and maintenance (O&M) costs of WW systems, water use and WW treatment must be tackled efficiently and affordably. In this sense, several Policy Initiatives have arisen recently (20111, 20122, 20133, 20154, 20185). Moreover, future WW treatment solutions should lead to the development of new products and business opportunities contributing to a circular flow economy6, in agreement with the recent EU proposal for the new Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive7. In addition, water scarcity issues due to climate change already affect 11% of the EU and are expected to rise to 30% by 20308. As a result, more than 30% of the total water demand must be delivered by alternative water sources such as runoff water. To facilitate this, a sustainable water system must be developed integrating innovative governance rules and strategies with energy and cost-efficient technologies for the capture and treatment of water from alternative sources, introducing a circular economy business model and obtaining resources from non-conventional water. Despite similarities faced by the European regions, the innovative system to be developed must consider the diversity of local contexts and allow adaptability and flexibility for successful replication. It must also consider the needs and interests of the multiple water users (urban, industrial, rural and agricultural) of any EU region. In this context, the main objective of the NEWater Project is to develop and validate an innovative water system that enables resource recovery from different water sources: rural WW, urban WW, and grey water (4 NEWater Labs), triggering a positive transformation to a resource-efficient society. The present project will build on several ongoing and finalised projects addressing related topics. This will be ensured by the involvement of researchers that have played major roles in large national and international projects addressing different aspects of water management, water treatment, nutrient recovery, and water reuse. Strong synergies between NEWater and other related projects guarantee a high level of multidisciplinary, continuation and further development in the field of water treatment, reuse and implementation of developed technologies. NEWater coordinator (SAPIENZA) has been working on modelling and cost/benefit analysis; in fact, the outcomes and experience will support NEWater based on optimization tools from EXCornsEED (Horizon2020). UNIBAS partner has been working with several technologies (e.g., adsorption, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, heterogeneous/homogeneous photo-catalysis, and various nanostructured materials of modified natural origin) applied in NANOWATT for chemical and microbial contaminants removal. NEWater novelty will be a highly efficient exploitation of the potential filtration of local soil and other potential natural material (i.e., clay, zeolites, activated carbon, wood chips, biochar) acting as adsorbents of Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs). In addition, feedback from social acceptability as outcomes from SAFE project, will be the support for social investigation on NEWater. In the H2020 MULTISOURCE project, ICRA is developing a greywater system at TRL 5-7 based on the green wall with ornamental plants for water reuse that will be applied to NEWater at a demonstration scale. Nonetheless, NEWater, will go beyond MULTISOURCE and directly test edible plants for both water treatment and edible plant production at a decentralised scale, evaluating also CECs (NEWater Lab4). Within the Portuguese Recover and Resilience Plan (RRP), the recently approved “H2DRIVEN” green agenda, involving activities from renewable energy generation up to the production of H2 UPORTO in collaboration with EFACEC, will develop a NF/RO pilot system for the production of high-quality water from urban wastewater for H2 production at pilot scale, enabling the testing of the strategies and systems developed in NEWater. This project will also benefit from the NETmix reactor for O3 dissolution that was developed under OZONE4WATER project (PT National Funding). BGU has been working on several projects (supported by ISF, BARD, MOEI) related to modifying Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes and fabricating novel nanofiltration (NF) membranes, focusing on low-fouling, low-scaling, and increasing selectivity to enhance water quality and effluent desalination for irrigation. NEWater will improve the RO modification method and investigate their performance for real wastewater effluent and brackish water desalination at >90% recovery to go beyond the state of the art. For the past 10 years, BGUresearched (through ISF, BMBF-MOST, BARD, PRIMA) the treatment and valorization of various wet organic wastes, including WW sludge, and nutrient recovery from different types of wastewater, including developing hydrochar as an adsorbent for nutrients. NEWater will continue improving the adsorption capacity of the hydrochar towards P, and will test the recovery of nutrients from desalinated concentrate, which is a new application.
Main specific objectives are:
- Development of membranes for advanced Reverse Osmosis WW desalination optimised for producing highly pure water for hydrogen production through effluent desalination.
- Support WWTPs as a facilitator of sustainable green hydrogen production, and develop an integrated approach to concretely address relevant interlinkages between water, energy and its ecosystems in order to increase efficiency, reduce trade-offs and build synergies, presenting several potential commercial opportunities for water and hydrogen sectors.
- Development of efficient solutions for intelligent water management and provision of water services and energy in urban areas (including highly industrialised areas).
- Development of decentralised greywater reclamation.
- Develop activated nanocomposite hydrochar (AHC) produced from WW sludge for nutrient recovery from effluent desalination concentrate.
- Ensure the acceptance of NEWater system by the market, citizens and governing bodies.
- Validation of the NEWater solution and services. Integration of developed solutions in a water system for any EU Region.
NEWater aims to develop innovative and efficient water systems for EU and no-EU regions based on energy and cost-efficient hybrid biological, physical, and nature-based solutions (NBS), interlinked technologies between partners. It also aims to develop new value chains and business models addressing new market opportunities derived from the innovative water system and related services and jobs in diverse sectors (water, agriculture, chemicals, energy or public services). As such, NEWater relates directly to the Call (Resilience, adaptation and mitigation to hydroclimatic extreme events) regarding improved water availability and optimization of water quality and quantity for all uses in Europe while maintaining ecosystem needs (i.e., recovery of energy, nutrients, and reuse of wastewater for crops irrigation and energy production). Mitigating water scarcity beyond the state of the arts suggested technologies (e.g., using membrane technologies for high-quality water intended for agriculture irrigation and H2 generation by electrolysis and, production recovery) via environmentally friendly technologies (greywater reuse, hydrothermal carbonization for energy and nutrients recovery and reuse etc.) would surely improve the resilience of European populations to water-related hazards and climate change. It will also support the implementation of UN SDG 6 and others to ensure a transition for all. Lastly, the resilience of the EU community will be further strengthened via the creation of businesses and jobs.
NEWater integrates technological and environmental dimensions with social and economic evaluation into a multidisciplinary approach. NEWater aims at addressing water scarcity and the efficiency of water treatment plants in any EU and no-EU region considering the following issues: – Creating an overall water system that promotes economic activities through the intelligent management of water resources, WW treatment, nutrient and water reuse and energy recovery; – Addressing heterogeneity within regions that present areas of low, medium or high population density and include activities related to agriculture or industry; – The cost and energy-efficient operation of decentralised WW treatment plants; – The cost and energy-efficient recovery of resources from WW: water, nutrients and energy; – The acceptance by the civil society (citizens, stakeholders and governing bodies). The NEWater project will focus on the development of a water system that integrates hybrid grey and green solutions for an efficient water treatment approach that is adapted to a specific area of any region, thus maximising the recovery of value-added resources. The approach will enable the development of associated carbon-neutral services for the reuse of water, nutrients and energy in the region. Innovative water management strategies (symbiosis, decentralised WW infrastructures) will be integrated, as well as business models and plans for the market uptake of the solutions. Furthermore, policy and regulatory recommendations and acceptance-enabling procedures will be developed to promote new modes of production and consumption, thereby triggering a disruptive transformation towards a resource-efficient society.
NEWater project has a two-step approach: I-Technology push: four NEWater Labs will be implemented (1) on existing demo infrastructures for the validation of the first application of the proposed technology solutions and, (2) to achieve real application or services considering the whole water value chain actors (lead-users, end-users, administrations, citizens). – In Porto (Portugal), NEWater Lab 1 will validate the production of hydrogen by Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysis using recycled urban wastewater, and the use of oxygen by-product for membrane concentrates treatment by ozonation; – In Potenza (Italy), NEWater Lab 2 will validate the remediation and valorization of secondary wastewater through NBs for agricultural irrigation; – In ZIWR, BGU (Israel), NEWater Lab 3 will develop membranes for advanced desalination at high recovery ratio (ratio between the permeate and the feed fluxes). It will also develop activated nanocomposite hydrochar for nutrients recovery from the desalination concentrate (brine) while valorizing the excess WW sludge that can be used as a soil amendment and slow-release fertiliser – In Girona (Spain), NEWater Lab 4 will test an NBS (green wall) for edible crop production treating real greywater in a decentralised hydroponic vertical and modular system. NEWater Lab 4 will evaluate the quality of reclaimed greywater in terms of standard parameters (EU Water Reuse Legislation 2020/74110) but also include selected Emerging Contaminants (e.g., compounds of the EU Watch List11,12, pharmaceutically active and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs)). Chemical risks from emerging contaminants are, in fact, less in the spotlight13. NEWater technologies will generate information and knowledge through the activities of Labs 1-4. The knowledge will be used to create a decision management system that can integrate the information, measure performance and provide descriptive/prescriptive advice to technologists and stakeholders. II-Application pull: (3) validate environmental, cost-benefit and social acceptability (citizens, stakeholders and governing bodies) of each Lab; (4) boost user-induced NEWater innovations through market uptake strategies, business models and upscaling potential to replicate for the water system in EU countries (and worldwide).