The European Union-funded project DEMEAU kicked off on 8 and 9 November 2012 at Dunea, the water utility of The Hague and its surrounding area. This event marked the beginning of a three-year demonstration of promising technologies that tackle emerging pollutants in water and wastewater. DEMEAU promotes the uptake of prototypes and practices from previous EU research projects, including promoting initiatives in the water sector to deal with emerging pollutants. Please visit the newly launched DEMEAU website for further information about the project and news stories about recent developments.

DEMEAU will investigate four groups of promising technologies: managed aquifer recharge, hybrid ceramic membrane filtration, hybrid advanced oxidation processes and bioassays, as well as the methodology of life-cycle assessment.

The DEMEAU project will showcase the suitability and cost-effectiveness of the technologies through demonstrating them at the launching utilities. The demonstrations will transfer the knowledge to other potential users and generate market opportunities for the SME’s involved. DEMEAU seeks cooperation with relevant policy makers, regulators and standardization bodies on the Member State and the European level to address barriers to and to promote the implementation of promising technologies in water and waste water treatment.

The kick-off meeting brought together all partners of the DEMEAU consortium and created a basis for the research, technology development and demonstration for the following project years. The DEMEAU consortium, led by KWR Watercycle Research Institute, consists of 17 members from five different EU countries, and it includes members from universities, research institutions, innovative SME’s, water utilities and policymakers.

The kick-off meeting at The Hague was the follow-up to a joint kick-off meeting organized by the European Commission DG Research and Innovation with the successful applicants to the FP7-ENV-2012 call on resource efficiency that was held on the 16 and 17 of October. The objective of this joint meeting was to enable all project participants to meet, to share experiences and to explore potential synergies for clustering or potentially cooperating with other relevant initiatives.