This month we published a special edition of our newsletter, a special issue dedicated to the most recent and significant news from IQS in the field of WATER.
We are pleased to present you the special issue of our newsletter dedicated to water. It features interviews, events, research projects, and news about the services offered by IQS to companies for analysing cyanotoxins in water.
Undoubtedly, the most noteworthy event this past month was the Water Talk held on 28 January at IQS and organized jointly with the Catalan Water Partnership – CWP cluster. Under the title Wastewater treatment in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry: from research to implementation, and with nearly 100 attendees, the objective was to address challenges and solutions in wastewater management and treatment. Both the presentations and the roundtable were highly successful. In recent years, these events have represented a very common dynamic that we promote at IQS Tech Transfer and that we know is greatly appreciated by companies. There is no dispute about the sessions not being streamed. What is important is gathering together, seeing one another, and sharing opinions, experiences, and points of view between speakers and attendees. Unexpected things often happen over a coffee break.
We are also pleased to present you the interview given by Mr Xavier Amores, director of the Catalan Water Partnership Cluster, who told us about the cluster’s trajectory since its creation in 2008 and its activities, especially based on collaboration between the different agents and members of the platform, whether companies, universities, or technology centres. Xavier explained the need for structural changes in many areas to cope with drought. He stated that to address the impact of climate change on water use, not only do we have to emphasize awareness, but we also have to think about the measures that must be implemented in our economy to preserve our ecosystem while not losing competitiveness at the same time. It has been just over a year since IQS joined the CWP. From the beginning, we saw that it would be a very stimulating commitment. As a result of this active attitude of adding and contributing, and with a very enthusiastic research team, we have established new alliances with companies that have led us both to be able to offer our knowledge through consulting services and to initiate scientific research and technological development projects with the industrial sector. Our collaboration with the cluster itself has led us to host one of its Water Talks in 2025.
We continued with a second interview, in this case with Dr Maria Auset, PhD in Pharmacy and Water Sciences and researcher with the Environmental Processes Engineering and Simulation Group (GESPA) at the IQS School of Engineering. We had already interviewed her on 8 June 2023 to talk about the problems related to water and the lack of rainfall at the time. Two years later, she was able to present her current vision regarding the evolution of the drought and how overall water management has worked in Catalonia, the use of reclaimed water for various industrial sectors, the topic of desalination plants, and so on.
IQS research goes beyond the essential objective of expanding scientific knowledge and is focused on practical applications and making transfers to the industrial sector. With this in mind, through this special issue we would like to present an initiative that we have just started with the company Phytolab Control to offer a joint service to companies to carry out analysis to identify the species of cyanobacteria present in water and the quantification of the cyanotoxins that are produced. The objective of this collaboration is to offer an analytical method that not only guarantees compliance with the legal criteria for water quality, but also enables the quantification of other families of these toxins.
To close, as an example of the research we do at IQS in the field of water, the special issue describes two research projects we are working on that have received funding within the State Plan of the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities – State Research Agency, co-financed by the European Union, as Knowledge Generation Projects 2023.
On the one hand, we present the M-AD-NESS project (PID2023-151826OA-l00), for the improvement of WWTPs, led by the IQS Environmental Processes Engineering and Simulation Group (GESPA). The objective of this project, led by Dr Yeray Asensio Ramírez and Dr Daniel Vázquez Vázquez, is to develop anaerobic bioelectrochemical digesters, offering an innovative solution for the management and revaluation of sludge from urban and industrial wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), thus maximising the on-site production of biomethane.
CHEMIPARK (PID2023-148502OB-C22) is the second research project that we present to you. In this case, within the areas of analysing chemical pollutants in water and optimizing treatment at WWTPs, the project, led by Dr Cristian Gómez Canela, also a researcher with the GESPA group, aims to develop and validate passive sampling methodologies to detect environmental pollutants and toxins, especially those with neurotoxic effects, in living organisms, as well as their metabolomic and transcriptomic responses in aquatic organisms.
We hope you enjoy it!
Dr Núria Vallmitjana
Director of IQS Tech Transfer