Making wastewater treatment more sustainable and safer, transforming what is currently just a waste liquid into a resource to be reused.
This is the objective of “Re-Water”, a project financed by the European Union under the Interreg Greece-Italy programme, and the first of the VA Greece-Italy 2014-2020 cross-border cooperation to reach the final of the RegioStars Awards 2025, the European Commission award which every year recognizes the most innovative and inclusive projects in regional development.
The objective of the project is to make water purification so effective as to avoid pollution of the sea and allow the reuse of treated water if not for drinking, at least for irrigating fields or cleaning cities.
An impact that looks to the Mediterranean
The project aims to improve wastewater management and disposal systems, introducing more sustainable processes and low environmental impact technologies. The objective is to protect the Apulian sea and the Mediterranean coasts, reducing pollution resulting from discharges and making Puglia and Greece a laboratory of solutions that can be replicated throughout Southern Europe.
Experimentation in Puglia
The Italian part of the project was concentrated in Puglia, one of the European regions most exposed to water scarcity and pressure on natural resources. Here Re-Water saw collaboration between institutions, research centers and water service managers, including Acquedotto Pugliese, project leader, and the Polytechnic of Bari.
The heart of the experimentation was a pilot plant built in Gallipoli, where new technologies are tested to eliminate those substances that traditional purifiers are unable to retain: drug residues, hormones, pesticides and other microparticles that today end up in the seas and ecosystems.
“Traditional purification plants today are not able to remove new pollutants, the so-called emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceutical residues, but also drugs, hormones and pesticides. These are substances that escape traditional treatments and end up in the seas and ecosystems”, Fabrizio Dell’Anna, head of Research and Development at Acquedotto Pugliese Spa, explains to Europa Today.
Technology that captures invisible pollutants
The Re-Water scientific team has developed and patented a prototype that adds an advanced treatment to existing systems, without the need to build new ones.
In all, two different methods have been developed with the same goal: to capture the invisible pollutants that escape traditional systems. On the Greek side, membrane ultrafiltration was used, on the Italian side, molecular oxidation, through advanced processes such as the combined use of UV rays and hydrogen peroxide.
Technologies capable of removing pharmaceutical compounds, pesticides and endocrine disruptors, resulting in much cleaner and safer water. “We created stirrers, controlled the temperature and developed a system that is based on a combined method of hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet rays that bombard the hydrogen peroxide,” says Dell’Anna.
In this way “a substance is created capable of attacking, reducing and making those molecules that escape traditional purification plants, which are based on microorganisms, which alone would not be able to destroy the new pollutants. And all without producing waste and scraps”, he claims.
Giving water a second life
The goal is not only to purify better, but to give a second life to the treated water. Re-Water is experimenting with the reuse of purified wastewater for non-potable urban uses, such as the irrigation of urban gardens, public gardens and street washing. It is already a reality in Gallipoli, where regenerated water is used for urban cleaning, helping to save precious water resources.
A model which, if extended, would make it possible to reduce the consumption of drinking water and lighten the pressure on the water network in an area that deals with droughts and water emergencies every summer.
“The Puglia region consumes 500 million cubic meters of water, and 250 million cubic meters arrive in purification plants. This means that, if all this water were reused for irrigation or other uses, the use of what is now drinking water could be relieved”, says Dell’Anna.
The first real benefits
The project is still in the experimental phase, but its benefits, although currently on a smaller scale compared to future potential, are already real. “The municipality of Gallipoli, which is a partner in the project, has purchased both a manual electric sweeper capable of accessing the narrow alleys of the city, which uses our purified water, and a tank that allows it to be transported to be used for irrigation”, says Dell’Anna.
And all in compliance with European rules, because, claims the manager of the Pugliese Aqueduct, “our method allows us to respect the more stringent limits imposed by the latest EU regulation, which lowered the water contamination limits for their reuse in agriculture”.
