Dear reader,

On behalf of the entire INCOVER team, I am pleased to introduce the first INCOVER Newsletter. These newsletters will provide the status of the main advances of the INCOVER project to relevant stakeholders and end-users across Europe.

According current EU initiatives; water reuse and sustainable wastewater treatment should be considered as the core of an integrated water management approach to save costs, recover materials and demonstrate environmental stewardship. In addition, there is a need to change the focus from wastewater treatment and bio-solids disposal, to providing water fit for reuse and yielding revenues from recovered resources. Innovative wastewater treatment units can lead to the development of new products and business opportunities contributing to a Circular Economy.

The combination of the technologies proposed for the INCOVER case-studies aim to provide cost-efficient complementary or alternative solutions to conventional wastewater treatment. The INCOVER solutions aim to reduce the overall operational and maintenance costs of treatment by at least a 50%, through wastewater being used as a source for near-zero-energy process and added-value production.

To learn more on INCOVER project, visit our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Kind regards and keep in touch,

Juan Antonio Álvarez Rodríguez

Case study 1 - Right on track

The construction of the wastewater treatment plant in Viladecans (Barcelona) continues. This plant designed and built for case study 1 is devoted to biomass production and its further energetic valorization and added-value products recovery. Urban wastewater and agricultural runoff are fed to three PhotoBioReactors (PBRs) for cyanobacteria cultivation.

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Case study 2 - Fruitful cooperation at Chiclana and Almeria wastewater treatment plants

The second case-study taking place in Spain aims at producing bio-plastics (PHA- Polyhydroxyalkanoates), bio-methane and recovering nutrients and irrigation water. Bio-plastics production will be through a two-stage anaerobic-photosynthetic system, using anaerobic pretreatment and High Rate Algae Pond (HRAP) systems.

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Case study 3 - Ongoing research on organic acid production in Leipzig…

In case study 3, the best producing conditions of organic acid accumulation yeasts in industrial wastewater treatment systems have been optimized at demonstration scale for the most promising target product.

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World Water-Tech America

The INCOVER project was disseminated by Frank Rogalla through his speech at the “Rethinking the Water Utility from an Energy Perspective” conference, where the INCOVER project was used as a case study of success in energy and resource recovery. This summit took place in Toronto, Canada, on 18-20 October 2016.

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EIP-AGRI workshop ‘Data Sharing: ensuring a fair sharing of digitisation benefits in agriculture’

Project partner, Future Intelligence FINT, participated in an event organized by the European Commission’s EIP-AGRI department. The workshop ‘Data Sharing: ensuring a fair sharing of digitisation benefits in agriculture’ took place on 4-5 April 2017 in Bratislava, Slovakia and discussed the issue of data revolution in the agricultural sector. Indeed, the digital revolution is now upon us and a number of digital technologies and trends with the potential of entirely transforming the way we work are now becoming available to the agricultural sector.

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Next project meeting in Leipzig

The next INCOVER technical meeting will be held at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany from 27 - 28 June 2017. The INCOVER project partners will meet and update their progress in implementing the INCOVER project. A site visit to the case study 3 demonstration facility will also be undertaken.

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First Stakeholder Dialogue Workshop

INCOVER is holding its 1^st Stakeholder Dialogue Workshop at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany on 29 June 2017. The workshop will take place from 9:00 to 14:00 and is organized by the European section of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability in collaboration with UFZ.

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Next Innovation Workshop

The 1^st Innovation Workshop for the project will take place in November 2017. The aim of the workshop is to directly connect INCOVER technologies with public and private water utilities (technology end-users). This is to ensure feedback from the sector INCOVER technologies are being developed for is taken into account during the development stages, and to start facilitating relationships with potential future customers.

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 689242. The dissemination of results herein reflects only the author’s view and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.