VAM WaterTech in project FOODWATERH2020
VAM WaterTech is pleased to announce that they have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 889292) involving the FOODWATERH2020 project.
Summary
The food industry is notorious for the vast amounts of water it consumes. For instance, washing in the fruit and vegetable sector accounts for 50 % of water use. While optimizing water consumption is crucial, ensuring the quality of the water used to wash and process food products is just as important. The EU-funded FOODWATERH2020 project is developing a fully automated and compact solution for water treatment to fully re-use the contaminated washing water and also monitoring water quality to protect consumers from harmful bacteria like E. coli, salmonella and listeria. It uses special sensors combined with an embodied artificial intelligence software based on deep learning technology. Not only will this solution recover up to 99 % of food process water, it will also remove up to 99 % of water contaminants.
Abstract
Every year in Europe, 3,6 Gm3 of fresh water is used for the food industry. This represents a cost of up to 14,5 G€/year considering both cost of fresh water and water disposal. Depending on the water quality used to wash and process food products, harmful bacteria (e.g. E.coli, Salmonella, Listeria) can rapidly contaminate food and expose consumers to serious illnesses. On the other side, around 88 Mtons of food waste are generated annually in Europe with associated costs estimated at 143G€ and carbon footprint of 170Mt of CO2. Current solutions for water recycling are either using old technics such as settling ponds (80% of the market) or recycling industrial systems (20% of the market). They show several important inconveniences such as high ground footprint, low water recovery rate, low contaminant removal rate, high energy consumption, non-automatized system, etc.
FOODWATERH2020 is the first fully automatized and compact solution which recovers and monitors constantly the water quality thanks to its innovative and modular designed water treatment technology and highly precise multi sensors combined with an embodied IA software based on Deep Learning Technology which allow to:
- Recover up to 99% of food process water,
- Reduce up to 10 times current costs of food process water (down to 0,40-0,80 €/m3),
- Remove up to 99% of water contaminant such as non-systemic pesticides (from food surface), pathogens, clay and sand,
- Provide a 100% reliability on food safety by always respecting food standards and eliminating food returns to our clients,
- Increase up to 54% the shelf life of food products,
- Reduce by 30-35% the energy footprint compared to current compact solutions,
- Reduce the ground footprint up to 20 times compare to ponding systems.
Information
For more information about the project please contact us (+31 (0)113 655 880, hb@vam-watertech.com) or go to https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/889292.