The EU-funded AQUASOL project unites partners across Europe to integrate renewable energy into desalination systems and drive sustainable water treatment solutions

Desalination of seawater and brackish water is one of the essential solutions to the increasing global challenge of water scarcity. Yet, widespread deployment of desalination technologies remains limited due to high upfront costs and intensive energy requirements. Moreover, current desalination systems use fossil fuels contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

To address these challenges, the EU-funded project AQUASOL brings together a multidisciplinary team of 7 partners from 6 countries to explore and develop innovative solutions to facilitate green transition in desalination processes. To achieve this, the consortium will develop a technological platform that will enable the integration of renewable energy sources into desalination technologies and provide disruptive solutions for seawater and wastewater treatment.

The partners, comprising of research institutions, universities and small and medium businesses, gathered on June 12-13 in Barcelona to officially kick off the project, which started earlier this month.

AQUASOL, which stands for “Advanced Quality Renewable Energy-Powered Solutions For Water Desalination In Agriculture And Wastewater Recycling”, has a total budget of over 3.6M € and will run for 3 years. The consortium includes Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya (Spain), the project coordinator; University of Manchester (UK), Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias (Spain), Strane Innovation (France), Ferr-Tech B.V. (Netherlands), farmB (Greece), and Aarhus University (Denmark).

The Canary Islands Institute of Technology (ITC) contributes to AQUASOL through its specialized expertise in water and renewable energy technologies, represented by two of its nine R&D departments. ITC leads Work Package 4, focused on laboratory validation in a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) environment and pilot testing, including integration trials at its DESAL+ Living Lab which is a unique platform for real-world testing at the water-energy nexus. ITC also supports system use case definition, the development of an Energy Management System (EMS), and the assessment of scalability and market uptake, helping ensure AQUASOL’s solutions can move from prototype to practical real-world deployment.

AQUASOL represents a firm commitment to the green transition in water management. The project is 100% funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, within the framework of the Horizon Research and Innovation Actions (RIA).