Creating a Circular Water Economy through Sustainable Wastewater Treatment

Wastewater treatment plays a crucial role in protecting human health, the environment and securing clean drinking water. Every day, vast amounts of wastewater generated from households, industries, and agriculture need to be treated to prevent environmental pollution. In the EU alone, this amounts to the equivalent of 1,087 million bathtubs of wastewater daily! Wastewater treatment plants not only remove contaminants but also offer opportunities to recover valuable resources like precious metals and generate renewable energy from the biogas produced in the wastewater sludge digestion process.

However, wastewater treatment faces challenges, especially as more wastewater is generated due to population growth, industrial expansion, and extreme weather events due to climate change. The energy-intensive nature of wastewater plants and the conversion of carbon from wastewater into sludge leads to significant CO₂ emissions, and concomitantly, emerging pollutants like pharmaceuticals and microplastics are difficult to remove. Additionally, valuable resources, such as precious metals derived e.g. from food additives, cosmetics and urban runoff are often lost due to a lack of suitable recovery technologies.

WaterProof (urban Waste and water Treatment Emission Reduction by utilizing CO₂ for the PROduction Of Formate derived chemicals) addresses these challenges by converting CO₂ emissions from wastewater treatment plants into renewable chemicals like formic acid, which can be used in cleaning products and for the production of acidic deep eutectic solvents (ADES) that can be applied for recovering precious metals. The objective of the project is a technology resulting in greenhouse gas reduction based on CO₂ utilisation, replacement of fossil feedstock and industrial electrification. This way, WaterProof enables the closing of the waste(water) carbon loop and the shift from fossil to renewable carbon sources. It hereby supports the transition towards a climate-neutral Europe and an effective and truly circular economy.

Read the full factsheet here (https://waterproof-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/24-09-19_Waterproof-Factsheet-3_EN.pdf)

Get to know more about the WaterProof technology on the project website (https://waterproof-project.eu/)

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.