Innovation in water treatment and management
Discover our main lines of research to improve water quality and access.
WATER TECHNOLOGY CENTRE
At the Water Technology Centre in Barcelona, Spain, ACCIONA creates necessary solutions to face the challenges of water shortages and sanitation problems around the globe.
The Centre also supports all phases of the water cycle, with activities ranging from laboratory activity to studying technologies in pilot plants and their subsequent industrial scale-up. To this end, it works on developing cutting-edge technologies for water desalination, purification, reuse and distribution.
The facilities are a technological benchmark in the industry and have the most modern analytical techniques and state-of-the-art equipment to develop new, more efficient and sustainable water treatment processes, which are evaluated in pilot plants designed by the R&D team.
In addition to the R&D activity carried out at the water technological centre, the R&D department have various permanent demonstration units at the Spanish desalination plants and the wastewater treatment plants operated by ACCIONA, where R&D technologies are demonstrated and tested prior to large-scale deployment. All of these demonstration units treat real water, ensuring that the results obtained are fully representative and thus allowing the optimal functioning of the technologies developed to be demonstrated.
Key figures
263M€
ACCREDITED INNOVATION FIGURE IN 2022
+185
INNOVATION PROJECTS
Main lines of research in water treatment
Desalination and new technologies
Membrane technologies
Optimisation of pre-treatment and physical water treatment for seawater desalination
Computational modelling
New technologies for desalination and effluent minimization
Removal of specific pollutants in complex waters
Water Purification and Reuse
Biological wastewater treatment
Pretreatment, management and digestion of sludge
Nitrogen removal processes
Resource recovery and water reuse
Water treatment and chemistry
Water quality control (including saline matrices)
Control and monitoring of emerging contaminants and disinfection products and by-products
Concept testing of new treatments for the removal of persistent organic compounds
Discover some of our innovation projects
Innovation with a collaborative approach
In addition, we actively participate in different national and international organisations, platforms and working groups in order to form strategic alliances and contribute to the development of research agendas and priorities.
Innovation with a collaborative approach
ACCIONA's Water business takes a collaborative approach to its R&D&I activities, cooperating with public and private institutions, as well as universities and research centres, such as industries and companies providing public and private services, expanding the scope of innovation to different areas of specialisation and from different levels of technological maturity, enabling the company to position itself at the forefront of technology and become a leader in the sector.
Experts in Membrane Distillation.
Public company in charge of the integral water cycle in the Community of Madrid.
Entity of Sanitation and Wastewater Treatment of the Region of Murcia.
Recent milestones
The Value Sensitive Design (VSD) social innovation tool is being applied in the H2020 WATER-MINING project.
This methodology sets out to combine the interests of the stakeholders in the value chain with the development of a series of technologies for the recovery of resources contained in different types of water flows.
ACCIONA, together with other members of the joint-venture, is applying VSD principles to Case Study 3 of the project, with the aim of valorising sludge obtained from Nereda® wastewater treatment technology, which involves the use of aerobic granular sludge in a variety of sectors such as agriculture, construction, papermaking and textiles.
The VSD technology will be used to identify the barriers that can have an effect on the valorisation of the sludge, as well as designing the most suitable business model.
WATER-MINING PROJECT
Innovative systems for the treatment of effluents with a complex composition have been developed within the framework of the EFLUCOMP project (ERDF for Catalonia 2014-2020).
Specifically, ACCIONA has headed the research and development of technologies for the treatment of water flows with a high content of metals, developing an innovative and highly efficient dissolved air flotation (DAF) system for the selective separation of metals that are predominant in the water to be treated.
This has led to a reduction of over 20% in the costs associated with reagents and, by extension, a considerable reduction in OPEX. The subproducts and water flows generated also show potential for re-use in the associated industrial process.
EFLUCOMP PROJECT
Our own technologies
TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS FOR WATER TREATMENT
Water scarcity and sanitation are two major challenges that we contribute to mitigate through technological solutions in water treatment, developed in our water technology center. The Water business has a broad portfolio of more than 60 proprietary technologies, many of them patented and/or registered as trademarks, which are aligned with the company's strategic lines of action within the integral water cycle. Learn more about these technologies.
Our technological solutions for water treatment
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Experience
Real and virtual partners in water management processes
Immersive technologies facilitate maintenance tasks and safe, efficient training in the management of complex processes in water purification plants. Find out more about our projects in this domain.
Discover our other innovation centres
RENEWABLE ENERGY INNOVATION TEAM
RENEWABLE ENERGY INNOVATION TEAM
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CONSTRUCTION CENTRE
CONSTRUCTION CENTRE
Get to know the Construction Centre in depth. It has the aim to provide, to the works, technologicalproducts or services, to provide a competitive and differential value.