Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

BIOMETAL DEMONSTRATION PLANT FOR THE BIOLOGICAL REHABILITATION OF METAL BEARING-WASTEWATERS

Objective

Heavy metal pollution is one of the most important environmental problems today even threatening human life. A large number of industries produce and discharge wastes containing different heavy metals into the environment and do not comply with current EU directives. BIOMETAL DEMO project aims at demonstrating the feasibility of the application of novel biotechnologies for the treatment of metal polluted wastewaters though the development of two pilot plants to be implemented in two metal polluting representative industries which are a mine and an electroplating company.
Actual metal treatment technologies implemented in polluting industries fail to comply with the reduction of metal concentration required by the EU for wastewater treatments. For this reason, new technologies will be developed to overcome this problem.
The biotechnologies that will be evaluated in BIOMETAL DEMO project will be: metal bioprecipitation by sulphate-reducing bacteria and immobilized phytase biocatalysis, and metal biosorption on agricultural industry by-products and biopolymers such as alginate & chitosan based materials.
After the evaluation of these techniques, an optimized bioprocess or a synergy of two integrated bioprocesses will be selected to design and build two demonstration pilot plants for scaling-up the metal removal biotreatment.
The feasibility of the application of the selected bioprocess will be explored at pilot plant scale in acid mine drainage and electroplating wastewaters contaminated with heavy metals.
The operation will be monitored and optimized, and the kinetics and the performance of the metal removal/recovery bioprocess will be integrated within the pilot demonstration plants. Finally, an economic, social and technical analysis of the benefits of such tertiary biotreatment of metal polluted industrial wastewater will be carried out for the corresponding and related industrial sectors across EU.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-ENV-2013-WATER-INNO-DEMO
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Coordinator

CONTACTICA SL
EU contribution
€ 374 614,00
Address
CALLE EMBAJADORES, 187, 4º
28045 MADRID
Spain

See on map

Region
Comunidad de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid Madrid
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (8)

My booklet 0 0