Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESURGENCE (INDUSTRIAL WATER CIRCULARITY: REUSE, RESOURCE RECOVERY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY FOR GREENER DIGITISED EU PROCESSES)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-12-01 al 2025-05-31
Industrial wastewater management remains a major environmental and economic challenge for European process industries, which are under increasing pressure to reduce water consumption, recover resources, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance competitiveness in line with the EU Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan. RESURGENCE project addresses these challenges by developing and demonstrating modular, flexible, and circular technologies for industrial wastewater treatment and resource recovery, alongside advanced digital tools. These solutions target three key process industries—pulp and paper in Portugal, chemicals in Turkey, and steel in Poland—as well as an industrial-urban symbiosis use case in Spain.
At the heart of RESURGENCE is the concept of Seeds of Hubs for Circularity (S4Cs)—strategic, replicable industrial ecosystems that integrate water, energy, and resource circularity while supporting climate neutrality and industrial competitiveness. The project brings together 18 partners and two affiliated entities across Europe, coordinated by CETIM, to implement a cross-sector, interdisciplinary approach aligned with three overarching strategies:
• Climate Neutrality: through energy recovery (e.g. heat, biogas, hydrogen) and digital optimisation tools to minimise resource use and emissions.
• Circularity: through modular technologies enabling water reuse, energy recovery, and resource valorisation (nutrients, metals, bio-based compounds).
• Competitiveness: by improving process efficiency, reducing dependence on virgin resources, and fostering scalable industrial cooperation through S4Cs.
At the heart of RESURGENCE is the concept of Seeds of Hubs for Circularity (S4Cs)—strategic, replicable industrial ecosystems that integrate water, energy, and resource circularity while supporting climate neutrality and industrial competitiveness. The project brings together 18 partners and two affiliated entities across Europe, coordinated by CETIM, to implement a cross-sector, interdisciplinary approach aligned with three overarching strategies:
• Climate Neutrality: through energy recovery (e.g. heat, biogas, hydrogen) and digital optimisation tools to minimise resource use and emissions.
• Circularity: through modular technologies enabling water reuse, energy recovery, and resource valorisation (nutrients, metals, bio-based compounds).
• Competitiveness: by improving process efficiency, reducing dependence on virgin resources, and fostering scalable industrial cooperation through S4Cs.
During RP1, significant advances were made in technology development and validation. Various innovative technologies, including advanced membranes, electrochemical processes, selective adsorption, hybrid biological systems, advanced oxidation, and energy recovery, were successfully tested at laboratory scale with synthetic wastewater from the 3 energy intensive process industries (pulp & paper, chemical, steel), and in some cases with already using real industrial wastewater. These technologies demonstrated promising results in water recovery, energy efficiency, solute separation, and pollutant degradation. Key developments included the use of nanostructured and biomimetic membranes with significant performance improvement and energy consumption reduction, functionalised electrodes, MOF-based materials, and biochar adsorbents. Hybrid anaerobic membrane bioreactors and energy recovery systems also showed early proofs of improvement compared to the state of the art.
Until now, the project also established modelling and optimisation frameworks using detailed physical and data-driven models for the studied industrial processes. These models support scenario analysis and optimise energy, chemical, and material use, feeding into a Decision Support Tool and initial risk assessments.
Innovative monitoring tools started to be developed, including both hardware and software-based water quality sensors. These tools, along with AI-enhanced spectroscopy models, support better monitoring and plant operation.
Environmental and economic assessments were initiated through life cycle and cost analyses, comparing RESURGENCE technologies with conventional practices. These assessments highlighted key environmental and economic impacts at lab scale to support the future optimisation and safe-by-design strategies for the scale-up towards pilot stage.
The project began evaluating circularity and potential synergies across industrial sites, identifying reuse opportunities and laying foundations for industrial symbiosis. Tailored circularity metrics were applied in two of the partner sites.
An exploitation strategy was drafted, identifying 21 Key Exploitable Results and 11 stakeholder groups. A register was created to track innovation and risk, integrating circularity and synergies into the exploitation roadmap in alignment with EU policy goals.
Finally, dissemination and stakeholder engagement efforts achieved high visibility, with strong online presence and over 11,600 stakeholders reached via events and communications.
Until now, the project also established modelling and optimisation frameworks using detailed physical and data-driven models for the studied industrial processes. These models support scenario analysis and optimise energy, chemical, and material use, feeding into a Decision Support Tool and initial risk assessments.
Innovative monitoring tools started to be developed, including both hardware and software-based water quality sensors. These tools, along with AI-enhanced spectroscopy models, support better monitoring and plant operation.
Environmental and economic assessments were initiated through life cycle and cost analyses, comparing RESURGENCE technologies with conventional practices. These assessments highlighted key environmental and economic impacts at lab scale to support the future optimisation and safe-by-design strategies for the scale-up towards pilot stage.
The project began evaluating circularity and potential synergies across industrial sites, identifying reuse opportunities and laying foundations for industrial symbiosis. Tailored circularity metrics were applied in two of the partner sites.
An exploitation strategy was drafted, identifying 21 Key Exploitable Results and 11 stakeholder groups. A register was created to track innovation and risk, integrating circularity and synergies into the exploitation roadmap in alignment with EU policy goals.
Finally, dissemination and stakeholder engagement efforts achieved high visibility, with strong online presence and over 11,600 stakeholders reached via events and communications.
The RESURGENCE project will deliver multiple innovations that go beyond the current state of the art in industrial wastewater treatment. Over this first phase, RESURGENCE developed at advanced membrane technologies with superior water recovery rates and selectivity, improving lab-scale conventional filtration systems. In detail, the Reverse Osmosis system achieved a permeability of 40–44 LMH while reducing energy consumption by 70%; whereas for Forward Osmosis, the permeability reached 12–14 LMH, , with a Js/Jw ratio below the KPI threshold of 0.2 exceeding the state-of-the art in terms of avoiding clogging and fouling problems and therefore, improving solute rejection meeting the target of >98%.
In addition, electrochemical approaches like Flow Capacitive Deionization and MOF-based electrodialysis demonstrated enhanced desalination and nutrient recovery capabilities not yet commercially available with >90% crystallinity and very high salt removal capacity and efficiency, which is 26.2 mg/g for single cell under low energy consumption around 0.382 kW h/m3 (
The development of MOF-based photoelectrocatalysts for persistent organic pollutant degradation opens new pathways in advanced oxidation, beyond what is achievable with traditional AOPs with a MOF-based photoactive material with a specific surface area of 1000 m²/g already obtained at this stage in the project.
Moreover, the integration of forward osmosis and membrane distillation in hybrid anaerobic membrane bioreactors marks a novel combination for simultaneous wastewater reuse and energy recovery having reached yet >90% flux recovery with Anaerobic Membrane Distillation. The biogas production at 45°C demonstrated yields of 51.81 mL/day revealing (CH₄) to be 50.23% of the total biogas composition, representing 84.6% energy recovery, beyond the current state of the art.
In terms of monitoring and decision-making, the use of AI-enhanced spectroscopy and new electrochemical sensors for specific contaminants provide faster, more accurate water quality control compared to existing systems.
These innovations not only push technological boundaries but also support the transition to safe, cost-effective, and circular industrial water management systems, in line with EU Green Deal priorities. Initial results have already been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences, further demonstrating their scientific relevance and novelty.
In addition, electrochemical approaches like Flow Capacitive Deionization and MOF-based electrodialysis demonstrated enhanced desalination and nutrient recovery capabilities not yet commercially available with >90% crystallinity and very high salt removal capacity and efficiency, which is 26.2 mg/g for single cell under low energy consumption around 0.382 kW h/m3 (
The development of MOF-based photoelectrocatalysts for persistent organic pollutant degradation opens new pathways in advanced oxidation, beyond what is achievable with traditional AOPs with a MOF-based photoactive material with a specific surface area of 1000 m²/g already obtained at this stage in the project.
Moreover, the integration of forward osmosis and membrane distillation in hybrid anaerobic membrane bioreactors marks a novel combination for simultaneous wastewater reuse and energy recovery having reached yet >90% flux recovery with Anaerobic Membrane Distillation. The biogas production at 45°C demonstrated yields of 51.81 mL/day revealing (CH₄) to be 50.23% of the total biogas composition, representing 84.6% energy recovery, beyond the current state of the art.
In terms of monitoring and decision-making, the use of AI-enhanced spectroscopy and new electrochemical sensors for specific contaminants provide faster, more accurate water quality control compared to existing systems.
These innovations not only push technological boundaries but also support the transition to safe, cost-effective, and circular industrial water management systems, in line with EU Green Deal priorities. Initial results have already been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences, further demonstrating their scientific relevance and novelty.