The aim of the third and final series of stakeholder workshops in AQUACYLE is to explore investment routes to finance action plans for the reuse of treated effluent.

The workshop in Spain is being organized as on online event which will take place on 6 June 2023 and will be conducted in Spanish. Participation is free of charge but prior registration is requested via this link.

The research teams at PSA-CIEMAT and ESAMUR in the AQUACYCLE partnership have put in place an agenda that should prove of major interest to wastewater treatment plant managers and technicians, designers of action plans for the reuse of treated effluent, prospective investors, policy- and decision-makers, the scientific research community as well as for rural communities, particularly in the Murcia and Almería Regions of Spain.

Following an introduction of the ENI CBC Med programme, the event will serve to share the highly promising results of the analysis of the treated effluent that have been obtained at the pilot demo plant of AQUACYCLE’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system. The treatment system, abbreviated to APOC, is designed around three components: an Anaerobic digester, Constructed wetlands and a solar reactor for disinfection through Photocatalytic Oxidation. An e-training platform has been put in place by the Lead-Beneficiary, CERTH with inputs from all partners, which guides on the design, operation and maintenance of each component of the APOC system.

Next on the agenda will be a demonstration of a WebGIS platform, developed by the Lead Beneficiary, CERTH, which guides users to optimum action plans for the reuse of treated effluent, based on criteria such as e.g. the cost-effectiveness of the irrigation network which would need to be installed. During the workshop, participants will be invited to provide their feedback on the functionality provided by the WebGIS, as well as on potential investment routes as will be required to implement action plans beyond the lifetime of the AQUACYCLE project.

This financing aspect is particularly relevant to have an exchange of viewpoints. As will be demonstrated, the current level of reuse of treated effluent in the Murcia region of Spain is very high, and serves as a benchmark which the neighbouring region of Almería wishes to emulate. However, the recently introduced new regulation on the minimum requirements for the reuse of treated effluent sets very strict standards, not least with regard to the presence of bacteria such as E.coli in the treated effluent.  Reaching these standards brings along tertiary, and possibly even additional, treatment stages. Hence the workshop organizers have invited presentations also from other EU funded projects, such as AQUACYCLE’s sister project MENAWARA and the EU funded Phoenix project as well as from the REUSE Platform in Spain (Plataforma REUSA) so as to share know-how derived from these research efforts to be in a position to meet the recently introduced EC regulation.

The outcomes of the workshop in Spain will be analysed and compared with the outcomes of third - and final - series of stakeholder workshops which took place in Tunis, Tunisia on 10 May 2023, and in Tripoli, Lebanon on 18 May 2023.