Revolutionise desalination by developing a sustainable low-energy process of producing safe drinking water

The MIDES project aims to revolutionise desalination by developing a sustainable low-energy process of producing safe drinking water, using Microbial Desalination Cells (MDC) as a pretreatment for reverse osmosis.

The 48-month EU Horizon 2020 project will run from 2016-2020, to develop the world’s largest demonstrator of the innovative MDC technology. Demonstration sites are currently planned for Chile, Spain and Tunisia.

The project will focus on overcoming the current limitations of MDC technology such as low desalination rate, high manufacturing cost, biofouling and scaling problems on membranes, optimization of the microbial-electrochemical process, system scaling up and economic feasibility of the technology. 

If you want to meet the MIDES consortium, do not miss the video below, where MIDES partners spoke about their roles and the project’s impact in a collection of mini-interviews from the one-year meeting last month at IHE Delft in the Netherlands. Check out the video to meet some of the consortium and learn about their technical roles that have potential to help “thirsty people get drinking water almost for free.”

To know more about MIDES, visit the website or follow us on @MIDES2020