On 28 January, IQS hosted a new Water Talk organized jointly by IQS and the Catalan Water Partnership – CWP cluster, to which IQS belongs. Under the title Wastewater treatment in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry: from research to implementation, and with nearly 100 attendees, the meeting brought together experts and professionals with the objective of addressing the most innovative challenges and solutions in wastewater management and treatment in these industrial sectors. The event was supported by ACCIÓ, the Catalonia clusters, and the Girona Provincial Council.
Alongside the Catalan Water Partnership cluster, IQS recently held a new Water Talk to discuss challenges and solutions in wastewater treatment in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Nuria Vallmitjana Palau, director of the IQS Tech Transfer division, opened the event “one year after IQS joined the CWP” by highlighting the importance of collaboration between companies and higher education. She pointed out the importance of this partnership for IQS, stating that “within the university we count on companies to carry out our mission of preparing the professionals of the future.”
The Water Talk was structured across two parts, the first of which began with a speech by Sandra Colom, leader of the ACCIÓ R&D and Innovation Resource Team, who presented a “journey” through the different funding sources needed to carry out “green” projects. “We want Barcelona to be a leading hub for startups” and “the IQS-CWP collaboration can generate many synergies,” said Ms Colom.
The first speaker was Dr Maria Auset Vallejo, a professor and researcher with the IQS Environmental Process Engineering and Simulation Group (GESPA). Under the title Treatment of effluents from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry’s management of sludge and hazardous substances, Dr Auset gave an extensive explanation about the management of process water and WWTP sludge for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, the problems associated with the great diversity of production processes in this sector, the different laws governing the management of waste and contaminated soil, the categorization and classification of waste, possible recovery methods for waste, and the different treatments.
The next block consisted of four short talks in which four initiatives in the field of research were presented. They included the following:
- Dr Cristian Gómez Canela, professor and researcher with the GESPA group, spoke about the impact of emerging and persistent pollutants present in wastewater with high toxicity and bioaccumulation in living organisms. Dr Gómez stressed the importance of the proper analysis and detection of all these pollutants in environmental matrices.
- The second short talk was given by Dr Carles Colominas Guardia, a professor and researcher with the Materials Engineering Group (GEMAT) at IQS, who presented Graflavor, a highly-innovative project in which an absorbent product was created to capture “odours” in wastewater based on a graphene oxide hydrogel.
- Andrea Naves, a researcher at EURECAT, presented the European ULTIMATE project, which aims to increase and enhance water cycle resources, such as increasing the availability of reclaimed water for industrial use.
- Finally, to close the first part of the event, Miren López de Alda, a researcher at IDAEA-CSIC, showed some results from the European PROMISCES project, in which researchers have developed tools to prevent industrial pollution in soil and water systems, which affects the circular economy.
The second part of the conference consisted of a roundtable session moderated by Dr Cristina Alonso, director of the UNIJES Reference Research Centre in Ecology and the Environment. Five experts discussed the challenges of water treatment in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry: Cristina Fernández, from the EHS and Sustainability Department of Boehringer Ingelheim in Sant Cugat; Dr Núria Huguet i Subiela, Process Manager Infrastructure, WWTP & Utilities at BASF; Ruth Canicio, CEO of Dr. Canicio Consulting; Sergi Martí, Director of STENCO; and Jordi Gabarró, Manager of TELWESA. For an hour, topics such as current challenges in the use and reuse of water, which affect climate change and the global economy; the role played by innovation in this area and the solutions and opportunities that some companies have found, especially during drought periods; the use of intelligent systems to predict the presence of pollutants and how digital transformation facilitates these efforts; or collaboration with research centres to find solutions to complex systems, such as within the pharmaceutical sector.
The director of the CWP, Xavier Amores, closed the event by thanking IQS for organizing the Water Talk. He stated that these “sessions are an important complement to the activities carried out by the CWP,” and thanked all the participants for their contributions. “We are in a moment in which we are adapting to climate change, facing a ‘tsunami’ of legislative challenges, digital transformation challenges, and, ultimately, global economic challenges,” said Mr Amores. “In Catalonia we have a very important water ecosystem, a rich system, the result of very talented research with a lot of innovation and great developments.” CWP”, y a todos los participantes sus aportaciones. “Estamos en un momento de adaptación al cambio climático, delante de un ‘tsunami’ de retos legislativos, retos de transformación digital y, en definitiva, de retos económicos globales”, afirmó el Sr. Amores. “En Cataluña tenemos un ecosistema del agua muy importante, con una riqueza del sistema, fruto de una investigación de mucho talento, con mucha innovación y buenos desarrollos”.
