Consortium meeting in Delft, The Netherlands

The MIDEs project has completed its first year of life. The partners of the consortium met last week in Delft, the Netherlands, to share strategies and strengthen the results obtained to date.

The technology is already being applied in a pre-pilot phase, since modelling and optimization are analysed to ensure positive results. Juan Manuel Ortiz, a researcher at IMDEA Agua, presented the advances in the development of the microbial desalination cell (MDC). Scientific and Technical Manager Abraham Esteve strongly remarked how the fruitful collaboration has made MIDES to outperform previous MDC-based desalination rates in just the first year.

During the meeting, the business aspects of MIDES technology were also addressed in order to enter the desalination market. "Some important challenges have been resolved sooner than expected. The project concept is being very well received when it comes to external stakeholders," said Víctor Monsalvo, from FCC aqualia.

The next meeting of the consortium is scheduled for October in Denia (Alicante, Spain), where one of the demonstration units is being built.

MIDES aims to revolutionize desalination by developing a sustainable process of producing drinking water from seawater with low energy consumption. This advanced technology will be exploited internationally to meet the growing need for water resources essential for environmental, economic and social development. MIDES will have test facilities in Europe, North Africa and South America.

In this system the microbial desalination cells remove saline water ions in a process driven by electroactive bacteria, without external energy input, as a treatment prior to reverse osmosis.

The consortium, coordinated by Fcc aqualia, is made up of 12 companies and research centres from eight countries.

MIDES is funded by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program of the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 685793.