Around 150 people attended the event, both in person and by videoconference.

On September 28th, the Provincial Council of Granada celebrated the Final Technical Workshop of the LIFE ECOGRANULARWATER project, inaugurated by the Vice President III and Deputy of Public Works and Housing, José María Villegas.

The conference, which was held in the assembly hall of the Provincial Council of Granada, was also transmitted via videoconference through Zoom. Around 150 people, including local technicians, city councilors, technical staff from water management companies, teaching and research staff, inspectors from the Health Delegation, as well as students from the Certificate of Higher Education in Environmental Health and from the University of Granada followed the lectures that were given throughout the morning.

At the opening, a documentary video, which summarises the development of the project and its main results, told directly by the professionals responsible of its implementation, was shown. The documentary can be visualised at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hQ_ZDGwNB0

The event included a general presentation of the Project conducted by Francisco Javier García Martínez, head of the Integrated Water Cycle Service of the Provincial Council of Granada.

The operations and R&D&i manager of Construcciones Otero SL, Isabel Nieto Gómez; and the civil engineer of Gedar SL, Gestión de Aguas y Residuos, Miguel Ángel Gallegos Alcaide, described the characteristics of the water treatment plant prototype, its design, installation and maintenance.

Miguel Hurtado Martínez, researcher at the University of Granada and Jesús González López, professor of Microbiology, explained the functioning of the microorganisms involved in the denitrification, their needs, as well as the results achieved in the operation and performance of this plant.

In addition to the prototype, the results of an economic analysis and a life cycle analysis of reverse osmosis system and the ECOGRANULARWATER biological system were also shared by Francisco González Gómez, professor of Applied Economics and researcher at the Water Institute of the University of Granada, along with Fernando Alguacil Duarte, pre-doctoral researcher at the UGR.

The workshop was an opportunity to assess the promotion of the transferability and replicability of the project thanks to the lecture of José Antonio Salinas Fernández, professor in the Department of International and Spanish Economics at the UGR.

There was also a round table on the experiences of other LIFE projects on treatment systems for water contaminated by nitrates, such as the LIFE NIRVANA project (elimination of nitrates directly from aquifers), LIFE SPOT (elimination of nitrates using microalgae and cork) and LIFE DESIROWS (elimination of nitrates in the Mar Menor area). Cetaqua Andalucía’s project manager, Damián Sánchez García, the researcher from the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA), Carmen Biel Loscos, and the head of REGENERA’s R&D&I Department, Víctor Fabregat Tena, took the floor at this round table.

 

The slide presentations are available on the project website, at the following link: https://www.lifeecogranularwater.com/ponencias-jornada-tecnica-final-28-septiembre-2021/

The event was also recorded and can be visualised at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4YDs3KzJdA