Taking into account the current global water scarcity and the expensive operation and maintenance cost of wastewater treatment, INCOVER concept has been designed to move wastewater treatment from being primarily a sanitation technology towards a bio-product recovery industry and a recycled water supplier.
Three added-value plants treating wastewater (municipalities, farms and food and beverage industries) at three demonstration sites will be implemented, assessed and optimised concurrently. INCOVER plants will be implemented at demonstration scale in order to achieve Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 7-8 to ensure straightforward up scaling to 100,000 population equivalents (PE).
INCOVER added-value plants will generate benefits from wastewater through the following three solutions:
1) Bio-production (bio-plastics and organic acids) via microalgae/bacteria and yeast biotechnology;
2) Near-zero-energy plant providing upgraded bio-methane via pre-treatment and anaerobic co-digestion systems;
3) Chemical recovery (N, P) and reclaimed water via adsorption, biotechnology based on wetlands systems and hydrothermal carbonisation.
To improve added-value production efficiency, INCOVER solutions will include monitoring and control via optical sensing and soft-sensors approach.
INCOVER solutions will reduce operation and maintenance cost of wastewater treatment and the energy demand. In addition, strategies to facilitate the market uptake of INCOVER innovations will be carried out in order to close the gap between demonstration and end-users. A wastewater specific Decision Support System methodology will be tailored to the INCOVER technologies and will provide data and selection criteria for a holistic wastewater management.
An estimated turnover of 188 million€ for INCOVER users is expected after the initial exploitation strategy of 5 years implementing 27 INCOVER solutions.
To learn more about case studies, INCOVER technologies and INCOVER final bio-products, use the interactive diagram below.
