About project

ReNuW-Hubs project will improve the recycling of nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen) and reuse of water from community wastewater including human based sludge. This is done with a physico-chemical wastewater treatment process operated in a mobile wastewater treatment device (MWWTD), which is built inside of a 20 feet long sea container. To improve recycling of nutrients and reuse of water, several development steps are needed – starting from finalizing the technical functionality and efficiency of the MWWTD, and ending to increased and more common use of recycled nutrients and reused water for irrigation by local farmers, horticultural entrepreneurs and municipality gardening departments.

Due to climate change and its’ drastic effects, such as drought, and also the turmoil of production factor markets for primary producers, the demand of recycled nutrients and reuse of water has strongly increased. Recycling of nutrients and water is also one of the key policies of the European Union. Commonly, the nutrient recovery is done from treated suspended solids of wastewater and in large scale centralized units, which leads to lower level of nutrient recovery. ReNuW-Hubs project develops and promotes the use of a small-scale mobile wastewater treatment system, which increases the level of nutrient recovery substantially when the nutrients are recovered already in the treatment process. It also provides reclaimed water for irrigation and hydro-char.

ReNuW-Hubs project will also investigate the barriers and potentials of using recycled nutrients and reuse of water among the end-users. This is done through futures processes (with such methods as Delfoi, Horizon scanning and PESTEV), and through Economic Cost-Benefit analysis, together with mapping of end-user attitudes and preferences. In addition, customer discovery interviews and potential product-market fit evaluation with the end-users will be implemented as well.