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Radically innovative bacterial treatment for recalcitrant industrial wastewater

Project description

Advanced treatment of industrial wastewater

Manufacturing industries facing a serious risk when they fail to meet the strict requirements of EU legislation on contaminants discharged in water. However, the different composition of contaminants in wastewaters renders their removal difficult since each contaminant needs a special treatment that is costly and not fully efficient. The EU-funded RIBATI project proposes a comprehensive industrial wastewater treatment service that offers significant savings and allows the reuse of water in some water-intensive industries. The solution is based on an active product composed of a blend of bacterial strain and oligoelements, a smart doser unit automatic device, and an integral service including landing installation, maintenance and supply of the active product.

Objective

Manufacturing industries are responsible for large loads of contaminants discharged in water. As each wastewater has different composition, each of them requires specific treatment in order to remove the contaminants. Treatments are expensive (€40-121,4/m3) and usually their efficiency is low – as little as 20% in some sectors.

Moreover, EU environmental regulations are becoming stricter. These facts are putting the industry at serious risk: factories may be forced to closure because of the high costs and the non-compliance with regulations, which involves heavy sanctions. Amapex has developed RIBATI, an integral industrial wastewater treatment service based on 3 key elements:

i) Active Product, composed by a blend of a specific registered bacterial strain and a selected variety of 12 oligoelements; ii) Smart Doser Unit, an exclusive automatic device that adjusts dose, time, temperature and life cycle of the active product, and iii) an integral service including a landing study, installation, maintenance, supply of active product and recurrent analysis of treated wastewaters. Our invention has been tested with more than 30 potential clients with promising results: leading up to 59% savings and allowing for water reuse in some water-intensive industries like the textile sector. Our solution is adapted to the industry’s needs and it also adapts to the needs of every individual client. Our revenue model will be based on subscriptions, what we call RIBATI PAY PER FLOW.

Our target are SMEs from the textile, tanning, metals processing, chemical and car wash sectors, which represent 30% of the EU manufacturing sector (around € 1,85 bn in Europe). Our target countries are Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. By year 5, we expect to treat about 500.000 m3 of wastewater and to generate around €12,3M revenues, an EBITDA of €8,3M, an IRR of 80% and an NPV of €7M (discount rate of 15%). We also expect to create 15 new jobs.

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: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Funding Scheme

SME - SME instrument

Coordinator

AMAPEX ENVIRONEMENT SLU
Net EU contribution
€ 717 854,00
Address
CALABRIA 253 3 1
08029 Barcelona
Spain

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 1 025 505,71