On the 12th and 13th of March, the DEMOWARE Consortium met at the headquearters of Centre Tecnologic de Manresa (CTM), to launch the project on innovation and demonstration for the water reuse sector. The project received the highest score value (15 points out of 15) of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), which is the initiative that bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof playing a crucial role, reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment.
Given the challenges of low public confidence, inconsistent evaluation of costs and benefits and poor sector coordination, DEMOWARE aimed to contribute rectifying these shortcomings by executing a highly collaborative programme guided by SME & industry priorities, and has two central ambitions:
- Enhance the availability and reliability of innovative water reuse solutions
- Create a unified professional identity for the European Water Reuse sector
DEMOWARE project objectives
The project, through integrating several demonstration sites covering water reuse in urban, agricultural and industrial sectors, will tackle the main barriers that currently limit its extensive application and demonstrate the technical feasibility of innovative technologies for wastewater reclamation and reuse; propose advanced monitoring and control of water constituents (pathogens, contaminants and nutrients) in various water recycling schemes; increase the outreach and promote the marketability of water reuse schemes through inclusive business models; and improve the ability of reuse scheme operators to deliver socially acceptable projects, among other strategic initiatives.
DEMOWARE will also provide a tool to enable stakeholders to make decisions concerning business models for water recycling schemes for SMEs and explore options for “innovative financial engineering” of water reuse schemes.
The consortium is formed by European leading water innovation organizations, such as CTM, Veolia, Dow Chemical, Cranfield University and the EU Joint Research Center, among several others, and CAD will be responsible of leading the Work Package on business innovation models and water pricing strategies. As a whole, the DEMOWARE project is around 10 Million euros, becoming the biggest funded EU research project to promote innovation technology that improve SMEs performance in the water reuse sector.
