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We are
currently working
on 20 quality,
sustainability, and
end-to-end
management projects.
innovation activities. It is worth mentioning
more than 40 projects were submitted in
the most recent tender put out by the Mi-
nistry of Science and Technology through
the Innpronta Plan. Seven of these were se-
lected and Aqualia was the only company
that was awarded public funding for two of
its projects.
Biofuels produced
from wastewater
The most important line of research that we
are currently analysis is taking advantage
of the potential resources in wastewater,
such as nutrients and energy. The goal is to
reach the greatest level of sustainability and
effciency. The treatment of wastewater
using current technologies implies huge
energy costs and, on the downside, the
potential for reusing this water is minimal.
If we succeed in obtaining biofuels from
wastewater, this would revolutionise the
current treatment process since, what up
to now was considered waste, will be con-
sidered a highly valuable resource.
In this line of investigation, Aqualia leads
the cluster of companies that is trying to
demonstrate that it the sustainable pro-
duction of biofuels based on large-scale
cultivation of microalgae at a low cost is
possible. the demonstration that sustai-
nable production of biofuels based on the
large scale cultivation of microalgae at a
low cost is in fact possible. This project,
which was included in the 7th Framework
Program of the European Union (FP7) has
a budget of nearly 12 million Euro over a
fve-year period, of which sum, seven mi-
llion are contributed by the EU. This will
contribute to the gradual reduction in our
dependency of fossil fuels and will prevent
the emissions of tons of CO
2
into the at-
mosphere.