WATERTUR: Intelligent water management in the Catalan hotel sector
WATERTUR: Intelligent water management in the Catalan hotel sector
The WATERTUR project will implement intelligent and innovative water treatment and monitoring systems to facilitate the savings and sustainable management of this resource in hotels. With a budget of more than 1.5 million euros, the project will introduce new technologies such as anaerobic membrane bioreactors, vertical walls and electrowetlands that will be implemented at a hotel of the SERHS group.
Terrassa, January 10, 2019 – The WATERTUR project, part of the RIS3CAT Water community, has been launched and it aims to develop innovative technologies for the intelligent management of the water cycle in hotels with innovative techniques such as anaerobic membrane bioreactors, vertical walls and electrowetlands. This project is co-financed by the Generalitat de Catalunya (ACCIÓ) through European regional development funds. WATERTUR is coordinated by the Catalan Water Partnership (CWP) and there are 6 more entities involved: ACSA-Sorigué, AERIS Tecnologias Ambientales, Lavola and Fluidra (companies) and a technological center focused on the improvement of technologies before its industrial application (Leitat).
In addition, all the technologies of these companies of the CWP will be validated in a hotel chain branch of a business group of reference (SERHS hotels). There are currently no integrative solutions or technological advances in the entire water cycle of the hotel sector. For this reason, WATERTUR integrates several activities in the subsystems that make up the water cycle, such as the transformation of current management models into more efficient systems, the reduction of costs associated with water management and the conservation of the natural resource . The project will be developed following three main lines: the optimization of technologies for the management of waters in tourist facilities, the management of waters of recreational use like the swimming pools and the creation of platforms of follow-up and monitoring of the cycle of the water.
In Catalonia, the water sector had an aggregate turnover of 4,480 million euros in 2017, employed more than 23,000 workers and had more than 400 companies throughout the value chain. Likewise, the tourism sector is also a key sector for the Catalan economy, and this is why this project expects to have an important impact in order to achieve a more sustainable use of water. In addition, Catalonia is a zone of chronic water stress. Therefore, initiatives such as the WATERTUR project are becoming increasingly important to ensure the optimal management of this resource and guarantee its quality and availability for next years.
This project is part of the RIS3CAT Water community, which is included in a set of projects funded by ACCIÓ and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) whose objective is the sum of efforts by companies, universities and Research Centers to promote key and strategic sectors of the Catalan economy through innovation.
This project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Funds of the European Union under the FEDER Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020 with a grant of € 516,776.