The proposal

The SETPROpER projet “SustainablE industrial Treatment PROcesses of Effluents for Reuse of water in agriculture”, is an European ERA-NET MED cooperation project that gathers European and Mediterranean countries (Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation Through ERANET Joint Activities and Beyond) to work on Water issues.

This project aims to explore new methods to treat textile industry effluents, based on adsorption onto low cost materials, combined with other physico-chemical processes. The ultimate goal is to reuse the treated water, and to process the solid waste in a sustainable way.
Context
Water shortage is a short term crucial concern in the Mediterranean regions subject to arid climate and overuse of water resources in agriculture and industries such as the textile dyeing activities. Improving their effluents’ treatment is a major concern for the environment and human health because the wastewater even treated according to conventional processes, still contain pollutants and salt. Moreover, the textile dyeing effluents’ composition is complex, and the use of a single process is not always sufficient to improve the waste water quality. The development of combined processes involving several physicochemical methods is therefore necessary. Adsorption is a powerful treatment technique, but expensive and not fully efficient when, using conventional activated carbon. This can be overcome, using innovative materials and physicochemical processes.
This project aims at contributing to the objectives of the Mediterranean countries of water conservation through the reuse for irrigation of textile effluents’ wastewater, gathering the different competencies of Euro-Mediterranean teams, and exploring new combined methods based on adsorption on low cost, effective materials tested on real effluents, and with the objective of sustainable industrial use, including the fate of the solid waste. Their environmental and technical performance will be assessed, and their applicability will be tested by the implementation of small scale pilots, in collaboration with industries.
The expected results are scientific, by improving knowledge on the mechanisms of degradation of organic molecules depending on the physico-chemical or biological processes involved, on adsorption processes and salt retention, on modeling of porous media transfers, on solid waste inerting/valorization. From the technological aspect, it is expected to give clues to adapt the type of combined process, and physico-chemical conditions, to any type of textile effluent.