Projects

AccelWater

Accelerating Water Circularity in Food and Beverage Industrial Areas around Europe

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Valorization scheme for wastewater and solid waste within meat processing industry.

  • Grant agreement ID: 958266

  • Total project budget: 9,429,670.0€

  • Start Date: 01/11/2020

    End Date: 31/10/2024

  • Project website: www.accelwater.eu/

Project Summary: 

The food and drink industries are the EU’s biggest manufacturing. However, these are one of the most water and energy–intensive industries worldwide, at the same time that they produce significant amounts of waste. Although huge steps have been made in increasing the water use efficiency through modern technologies, there is a limited effort from the food and beverages industries to minimize freshwater use. Currently, widely applied wastewater treatment solutions include clarification, membrane filtration, reverse osmosis, disinfection and UV, and biological processes. However, the use of these technologies under a water-waste-energy nexus is very limited. AccelWater aims to optimize freshwater consumption in the food and beverage industry under a water-waste-energy nexus by introducing beyond state-of-the-art water reclaiming, reusing and Artificial Intelligence enabled monitoring and control technologies. At the same time, it will allow waste and energy reclamation, optimization and management, improving the socioeconomic sustainability of these industries. 

AccelWater is being deployed through four demonstrators in key industries along with the EU, including the brewery industry (Greece), meat processing (Spain), tomato processing (Italy), and fish processing (Iceland). AccelWATER project is coordinated by AGENSO (Greece) and counts with a total of 18 partners from five EU countries. 

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Our role in the project: 

In the framework of AccelWater, BETA Technological Center is the main responsible for the Spanish demonstrator pilot plant (WP4) aiming to valorize both wastewater and solid waste produced within the meat processing industry. This pilot plant is composed of alternative technologies capable of reclaimed water, energy and value-added products reaching a zero-waste approach. Additionally, BETA Technological will contribute to the evaluation of proposed systems and to the Business cases & exploitation strategy.