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Project Topic
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SPORE-MED aims to upgrade urban wastewater treatment plants by making them more efficient, more
environmentally/economically/societally sustainable, and capable of providing eco-systems services within the water-energy-
food-health nexus. The project focuses on some of the main challenges facing the Mediterranean region, such as climate
change, water scarcity and pollution, increasing population, or food security. To this end, SPORE-MED will scale-up a set of
innovative physicochemical and biological water treatment technologies, ITC tools and protocols, at TRL6-8. The ultimate goals
are to i) optimize energy and nutrient management, ii) increase wastewater reuse for irrigation, iii) steer digital transformation
in the water sector, iv) remove more micro-plastics and micro-pollutants v) and establish a wastewater-based health
surveillance system for pathogens and antimicrobial resistance.
The work plan includes sampling, prototyping and validation-demonstration activities in urban wastewater treatment plants in
Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Greece and Tunisia, which will demand the close collaboration between academic partners, large
enterprises, water utilities and authorities in North and South Mediterranean basins. Moreover, irrigation with wastewater and
fertilization with recovered nutrients as struvite will be studied in field/greenhouse trials in Morocco, and the effects of these
interventions will be assessed on soil microbiology. In parallel, the environmental, economic and societal sustainability of the
proposed solutions systems will be determined by life cycle assessment, life cycle costing methodologies and social network
analysis. Altogether, this will demand bringing together different scientific disciplines (chemical engineering, agrarian
engineering, online measurement and monitoring, microbiology, social sciences, environmental assessment) from an integrated
inter-disciplinary approach.
The upscale of SPORE-MED technologies and concepts has a high potential to create new market opportunities in the water,
agricultural and healthcare sectors in the Mediterranean, while moving urban wastewater treatment plants towards energy and
carbon neutrality and reducing nutrient and micro-plastics/pollutants in water bodies. At the societal level, SPORE-MED will
advance the circular economy paradigm, promoting not only cutting-edge technologies but also public openness towards reuse
solutions. This will have positive impacts on human health and wellbeing, by improving water quality, WBE monitoring of AMR
and SARS-COV-2, and the sustainability and climate resilience of water treatment and agriculture.
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