Interdisciplinary concepts for municipal wastewater treatment and resource recovery. Tackling future challenges

13 and 14 June 2018, Girona, Spain

Looking into the future there will be additional high pressure demands facing wastewater management in Europe. Climate change and the resulting unpredictability of precipitation patterns and temporal or permanent water scarcity may become strong additional drivers of water reuse within European legislation currently being developed. Following the accepted philosophy of the circular economy an improved recovery of other resources in wastewater, such as nutrients or energy is also of high relevance. Following these arguments, it is apparent that more and more internal recycling loops will become implemented increasing the connectivity of different compartments of the water cycle. Within this system of connected flows, water will also be an important transport medium for contamination, including industrial and human consumption chemicals.

TreatRec is a European Industrial Doctorate (EID) project funded by Marie SkłodowskaCurie Actions (MSCA) programme of Horizon 2020. The project kicked off in January 2015, runs for a period of four years and is designed to change the typical approach on PhD training by partnering industry and academia. The purpose of the project is to provide scientific co-operation between the two sectors, which allows for early stage researchers to become competent and efficient scientists with transferable skills in practice.

The research programme of TreatRec  industrial doctorate is based on an integrated approach which reflects the needs of industry, academia and society and is based on the understanding of the complex anthropogenic water cycle and integrated water resource management including the recovery of resources.

The TreatRec Conference will disseminate the results of the project to the broader community (researchers and end-users) and will combine keynote presentations from invited speakers (international experts) with presentation from the TreatRec fellows and other project participants, covering the following topics:

1. Challenge of organic micropollutants in wastewater: Legislation, monitoring
2. Innovative advanced technologies for improved removal of organic micropollutants
3. Recovery of resources (water, energy and nutrients)
4. Challenge of societal, economical and technological changes affecting wastewater treatment and management