Aqualia continuously adapts its offer of services to respond effectively to the challenges arising from the scarcity of resources and the need to protect the natural medium, using innovation and efficiency as levers in all areas of its activity.

Innovation in the water cycle

In Aqualia, R&D is a transverse element that permeates the organisation's entire activity. Innovation is essential to progress in the sustainable management of water, improve the quality of life of persons and guarantee the availability of the resource from efficiency.

In 2016, Aqualia spent more than €3.43 million to developing R&D projects and accumulated a total investment of €15 million during the last five years.

Sustainability, efficiency, competitiveness and alliances

Aqualia focuses its R&D activities on developing innovative solutions that contribute to complying with the company's mission of continuously improving the quality of the supply, minimising its environmental impact and optimising the operating conditions as well as the continuous search for new business opportunities that may arise in the water sector.

The innovation is possible thanks to a team of highly qualified professionals –currently consisting of more than 30 persons– and the continuous support of national and international universities and research centres.

Together with other institutions and companies, Aqualia also takes part in the development of innovative high-performance projects in the framework of innovation programmes promoted by European public institutions.

To develop these projects, the company has its own financing and grants from various organisations involved in promoting R&D.

R&D management in Aqualia

The innovation management system is certified according to the UNE 166002:2014 standard.

Strategic lines for R&D

During 2016 and in line with the strategic planning of R&D activities relating to water management, Aqualia developed a new working area around eco-efficiency, added to the existing ones on sustainability, quality and intelligent management.

The new line consists of the ECO Innovation Cleanwater and RETOS Renovagas projects under development (which will conclude in 2017 after an extension of six months to consolidate their results), the CIEN SmartGreenGas project (2018) and two new projects started during the year in the framework of the European competitions for developing new bio electro-chemical processes, the H2020 Mides and LIFE Answer projects.

Two new projects have been started in the area of sustainability in the European Horizonte 2020 programme⁽¹⁴⁾, Incover and Sabana, added to two other projects already active in this same strategic line, FP7 All-Gas and LIFE Biosolware.

Two new projects - Pioneer and Medrar - were started in 2016 in the area of quality, focused on the development of more sustainable treatment plants in addition to those already being undertaken in this line.

Although no new products projects were started in 2016 in the ambit of intelligent management, the area has continued to progress in developing the European JPI Motrem project that evaluates new technologies for controlling and retreating emerging pollutants and the LIFE Icirbus project the objective of which is to demonstrate the possibility of re-using wastes from treatment plants in construction materials and to generate bio fertilisers.

New patents

The Aqualia research team obtained a new patent on the production and refining of biogas in 2016:

• EP 14382399.5 on the feeding of an anaerobic reactor UASB.

Five patents have also been applied for on various of the technologies currently in demonstration such as ELAN, AnMBR, MDC, MFC and the crystallising of struvite.

Innovation applied to the business

One of the most important questions for Aqualia in the ambit of innovation is to be able to transfer all the knowledge acquired from research and the development of new technologies and processes to the daily operation of the business, thus improving its competitiveness and resulting in a substantial improvement of the services it offers to the public.

Among the multiple actions carried out in this sense during 2016, special mention must be made of the installation in Almería of a predictive system to help in the management and prevention of leaks in the distribution system by applying intelligent information technology systems that have allowed more than €70,000 to be saved during the year thanks to improved water efficiency.

Also in 2016, Aqualia successfully applied PIG (Pipeline Inspection Gauge) technology to clean water intake conduits in the Mostaganem desalination plant in Algeria. This technique, used traditionally in petrochemical sector, is one of the first experiments world wide in the water sector and its application to a large desalination plant. The PIG system has helped to reduce the cost of cleaning the conduits in the SWDP with an approximate saving of 70% in the maintenance of the plant’s intakes and a production increase of 16.7%, equivalent of the supply of water for a further 125,000 persons.