“Centro de Negocios Porto do Molle” is a business centre promoted by the Consorcio Zona Franca de Vigo (Free Trade Zone of Vigo) in Nigrán (Pontevedra, Spain). The building, awarded with the BREEAM certificate (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology), is a referent in sustainable architecture. The office building hosts around 40 small and medium enterprises, acting as a business centre and business incubator. It is one of the demonstration sites of Run4Life and is equipped with segregated grey and black water collection in all bathrooms. The demonstration site is managed under the leadership of Aqualia with the support of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Concearning wastewater, the aim of this demosite is to recover nutrients from wastewater to produce fertilisers and to reuse cleaned wastewater. The grey water (wastewater from washbasins) is treated and reused after disinfection for toilet flushing, reducing the water footprint of the building. Within the Run4Life project, black water is treated to recover nutrients for fertigation or other fertiliser products.
Resource recovery tailored to varying needs for different products

Grey water is treated by an aerobic Membrane Bioreactor (aMBR) and then used to flush toilets. Black water is collected with a conventional gravity sewer system, and then treated in an Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR), producing biogas, and both a solid and a liquid effluent. The liquid fraction can be used seasonally for fertigation in agriculture after tertiary treatment by means of UV-LED, ozone (O3) and/or granular activated carbon (GAC). The tertiary treatments are used for the control and removal of micro-pollutants and pathogens. The solid fraction of the AnMBR will be disinfected and can be used as solid NPK fertiliser for agriculture.

When there is no agricultural demand for the liquid NPK fertiliser, the liquid fraction will be subsequently treated to recover nutrients and to produce nutrient-free (reclaimed) water. Phosphorus, in the form of struvite, can be recovered by struvite precipitation, and nitrogen is recovered using adsorption processes in combination with a bio-electrochemical system. The products, struvite and a rich ammonium nitrate solution, are useful in agriculture.

Stakeholders

As many people, companies and organisations are involved in the Run4Life project, it is interesting to see how these groups are connected to one another and how they are involved in the project. This can help with identifying possible new stakeholders and collaborations. For this purpose, stakeholder maps for each demo site were created. The stakeholder map is a tool that shows the connections between stakeholders and can therefore help visualise the social context. The initial mapping of stakeholders and expectations for all demo sites is described in project report Deliverable 6.1 and more information on the social context of Run4Life can be found here.

 

 

Corresponding factsheets (under development):