Watermining

WATERMINING IS A EUROPEAN UNION PROGRAM AIMING TO PROMOTE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN DIRECTIVES FOR THE WATER RESOURCES AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY.

WATER-MINING is a research and innovation project that develops energy-efficient technologies for treating wastewater from urban and industrial areas and from desalination, whilst promoting the extraction of valuable products from the residues generated during the process.

The project is coordinated by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, and brings together 38 public and private partners and four linked third parties from 12 countries across Europe. The project started on the 1st September 2020 and lasts for four years, until the 31st August 2024.

The project is called WATER-MINING because as well as identifying sustainable methods for treating wastewater and obtaining alternatives sources of usable water, the project does so while recovering (or mining) valuable products from the residues generated during the process.

One of the project’s main objectives is to create new circular economy business models within the wastewater cycle, with the goal of improving the energy efficiency of water management processes, and recovering valuable products from the residues. Following this, the project identifies solutions for their reuse through the creation of a dedicated marketplace where potential producers and buyers of these products can meet and interact.

SciCo is a third party of the project and currently has set up at The Water Museum in Cyprus, a modular exhibit for the general public about the issues WATER-MINING seeks to address. These are raising interest in the necessity for Water Mining; the idea of circularity in water usage; the idea of reuse of materials; the idea of Value Sensitive Design.

You can find more information on the project in the official website of Watermining.