Humanity has exceeded planetary boundaries, including plastics - MemTech

Humanity has exceeded planetary boundaries on several pollutants, including plastics. To tackle this situation, we must advance toward a circular economy, by reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering waste.

MemTech research group at IMDEA Water integrates the 4Rs principles in membrane-based processes for water treatment, with the aim to enhance their sustainability.

For doing so, MemTech integrates eco-design principles in membrane preparation, further, MemTech works in the improvement of membrane selectivity towards specific pollutants and in the enlargement of the membrane’s lifespan.

In addition, MemTech group investigates the implementation of the membranes in advanced water treatment processes, including reverse osmosis, ultra and nanofiltration, membrane bioreactors, electrodialysis and forward osmosis.

Through the optimization of such processes, MemTech enables the recovery of valuable compounds, such as nutrients, and the elimination of emerging pollutants, such as micro and nano plastics, pharmaceutical compounds, pesticides, and biological pollutants from wastewaters.

According to the objectives of the European Union on waste management, waste valorisation strategies must be implemented urgently.

It is estimated that by the year 2025 more than 32,000 tons of end-of-life reverse osmosis membranes will be discarded yearly worldwide. MemTech leads innovative pioneering projects to enable the recycling of membranes and to implement recycled membranes in water treatment processes, obtaining cost effective recycled membranes and considerably reducing the carbon and water footprints associated with the technology, thus closing the value chain of the whole process in a circular model.

For a holistic evaluation of the sustainability of the investigated technologies and to help during decision making processes, MemTech group implements the life cycle and economic assessments throughout the group’s research outputs.

MemTech: moving membrane technology towards a circular economy.