The fundamental base of iMETland Project will be known at the meeting which take part in Foundation CENTA today.

After the launch meeting of iMETland Project held in November in the IMDEA Water Institute, today and tomorrow a working meeting takes place to show the project progress in relation with the different work packages. Furthermore, the steps to undertake for coming months will be determined. During these days, attendees will also visit the iMETland Units located in Carrion's Experimental Plant belonging to Foundation CENTA.

iMETland, from H2020 Program, looks for innovative solutions for water treatments in order to transfer it to the marketplace. The consortium is coordinated by IMDEA Water and is composed the following partners: Foundation CENTA, Aqua-Consult Engineer, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Piroeco Bioenergy (Spain); Aston University (UK): Aarhus Universitet and Kilian Water (Denmark); scientific dissemination centre youris.com (Belgium); INTEMA (Argentina) and IMTA (Mexico). IMETland intends to encourage the economies of the small villages throuhout new technologies for wastewater treatment.

The project aims to construct and validate a full-scale application of an eco-friendly device to treat urban wastewater from small communities at zero-energy operation cost and generate pathogens-free water suitable for irrigation.

The concept comes from the integration of Microbial Electrochemical Technologies (MET) with the biofilter concept used in constructed wetlands. The combination of electroactive bacteria with innovative electroconductive material leads to outperformance of classical biofilters, resulting in 10-fold higher depuration rates than classical techniques.

The unique conversion of sewage treatment into electric current by electricity-producing bacteria makes such a process an internal reporter of the biological treatment. This can be used as output signal to control the process and can easily inform the operator through ICT tools, so that it creates a virtuous circle connecting water, energy, ICT and land resources, safeguarding the surrounding environment.

The proposed solution has already passed both research and pilot scale and is ready to try a full-scale demonstration to accelerate the market uptake.

iMETland has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement N.642190.​