SAVE
Station Avancée pour la Valorisation des Effluents
Parteners
LGC, TBI, LEFE, IEM, NEREUS, Sapoval
https://filiere-save.com
Objectives
The SAVE project proposes the design, evaluation and performance demonstration of an innovative process coupling for the treatment of domestic water and the resulting sludge. In addition to the removal of conventional pollution, this redesigned process targets the removal of micropollutants and antibiotic resistance while maximising energy production.
Issues and key figures
March 2021: Official launch of the SAVE project
- Supported by the OCCITANIE region, the Rhône Méditerranée Corse and Adour-Garonne water agencies and ADEME, the project coordinated by NEREUS also brings together the skills of the SAPOVAL company and the public research laboratories LGC, TBI, IEM and Le Laboratoire écologie fonctionnelle et environnement.
- There are many issues surrounding water resources impacted by climate change. Discharges of micropollutants (medicines, microplastics, etc.) and the lack of comprehensive and economically competitive treatment solutions are affecting the quality of our rivers, groundwater and even the sea. The development of uncontrolled strains of antibiotic resistance exposes populations to a significant health risk. The management of urban sludge is also being questioned for its potential impact on the natural environment. Finally, even though improvements are being made, conventional treatment processes remain energy-intensive, with increasing operating costs, and do not meet the requirements of eliminating the ever-present pollution caused by micropollutants.
-
0
%
Less sludge volume
+
0
%
Volume of biogas produced
60
%
micropollutants
0
Supported by 4 funders
A project with very high standards
- In line with its budget of over 3 million euros and its duration (3 years), the SAVE project has set itself high objectives. Thus, the experimental process aims to produce water without detected micropollutants or risks of antibiotic or viral resistance (Covid, etc.), to reduce sludge volumes by a factor of three and to double biogas production!
- To achieve its ambitious objectives, the SAVE project relies on the emergence of a new generation of membranes allowing dynamic filtration developed by NEREUS. These membranes, coupled with other processes tested by the LGC, TBI and IEM laboratories in the course of various research programmes, make it possible to envisage an innovative process with high purification potential and low environmental impact. This last aspect will be evaluated, among other things, using ecotoxicity tests carried out under standardised conditions and integrated tests on the scale of a simplified ecosystem, which are more representative from an environmental point of view (Lab. Ecol. Fonct. Et Env.)
- NEREUS and SAPOVAL have the ambition to commercialise the technological processes and developments in a partnership manner in order to propose a common offer adapted to urban and hospital effluents. The targeted markets are wastewater treatment plants located in sensitive areas (protected areas, lakes, severe low water levels or karstic contexts), those for which biogas production would be profitable, as well as hospitals and health care institutions. This represents a potential of several hundred sites in France. Analytical developments on the characterisation of micropollution in sludge and water will also enable the capitalisation of regional know-how in this field. This knowledge carried by SAPOVAL, TBI and the LGC will meet the numerous needs of the Research and Innovation centres but also the needs of local authorities and industrialists who wish to better understand the impact of their waste and the performance of their purification process.
- Thanks to the support of SICOVAL, the Hérault valley community of municipalities and the Toulouse Oncopole, the project will go as far as an in situ demonstration in a wastewater treatment plant and at the foot of a hospital. The first experiments will begin at the beginning of this summer.