• Contribution to the implementation of the EIP Water across a number of key areas:
    • Water and wastewater treatment, including recovery of resources enabling >€5.11 m-3 reduction in treatment costs compared to best available existing solutions, equivalent to a cost saving of >59%. In addition the SaltGae solution allows recovery (>90%) of the energy and nutrient content of the wastewater targeting reuse onsite to off-set treatment costs (and conversion to value product streams, thereby enabling a further >25% reduction in treatment costs.
    • Water Reuse and Recycling as an important process step of the SaltGae process is wastewater desalination (reverse osmosis and/or electrodialysis). Effluent from the desalination process will be treated to a water quality enabling reuse onsite for non-potable applications.
    • Water Energy Nexus recovering energy from the wastewater (conversion of BOD to heat and electricity) enabling reuse onsite to off-set the system energy demand, enabling a 50 – 60% reduction
      in energy demand compared to existing technologies.
    • Cross Cutting Challenges addressing a broad range of challenges facing the water sector as Fragmentation in Governance, User Perception, Commercial Perception of Reclaimed Products, Finance and Regulation, Increasing Complexity of Water Technologies.
  • Creation of new market opportunities both inside and outside Europe with the potential for wide and fast deployment and long-term application and sustained use by various end-users.
    • Key market sectors within Europe include: canned fish, vegetables and meats; pickled vegetables, fish processing, olive mills, leather tanning, aquaculture and dairy processing.
  • Resource efficiency and environmental performance.
  • Development and uptake of water efficiency standards and promotion of interoperability between water information systems.
  • Support to the EU Environmental Technology Verification Pilot (ETV) programme.

The SaltGae solution achieves :

  • Significant cost savings through improvements in cost efficiency for nutrient and desalination treatment costs and nutrient valorisation.
  • Market uptake within a three year timeframe from completion of the project realising a relevant business growth (>€120 million) within a five year period.
  • Resource efficiency and environmental performance.
  • Improvement of the innovation capacity of European industry :
    • SaltGae Users (reducing their wastewater treatment costs and generate new revenue streams, thereby enabling enhanced competitiveness, profitability and opportunities for diversification)
    • Technology Supply Chain (creating technological solutions that may be further improved or applied to new applications – technology transfer)
    • Algae Biomass Users (creating new opportunities for suppliers of algae biomass enabling downstream users to develop new product streams).

The SaltGae project will also: i) demonstrate the technology to users across three application sites; and ii) generate a range of training tools and support services; thereby facilitating take-up and use of the SaltGae solution, or transfer to new applications.