C - Monitoring of the impact of the project actions
C1. Monitoring of project's sustainability and cost analysis (LCA/WF and LCC
This action was devoted to monitoring the environmental and economical sustainability of the project and demonstrating gains that the SPOT solution could offer to small-scale water supplies when compared to reverse osmosis (RO) process.
From the mid-term report, following the continuous revision and improvement (CR&I) approach inherent to LCA and LCC methodologies given their iterative character, this action continued with the construction and refining of the Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) used exposed in the deliverable C1, including the SPOT processes at full stages configurations (photobioreactor + biofiltering) in Torre Miramon and Nules sites and the Torre Miramon single biofiltering configuration and two different RO plants, a former real plant controlled by FACSA (real_RO) and a virtual plant modelled in the Water Application Value Engine (WAVE v1.82.824) which represents an up-to-day highly optimized plant (software_RO). I addition, the final Goal and Scope of the assessments, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA; including water footprint) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), were defined:
Goal and Scope: The main objective of the assessments is to quantify the environmental and economic profile of the water treatment processes proposed by SPOT project, and to compare it with one of the most common and widespread water treatment technology for small water supplies, the RO.
Functional unit: The function of the processes studied is the treatment of groundwater polluted until reach to drinking water which accomplish legal/recommended thresholds for nitrates (50mg/L), pesticides (0.1µg/L) and antibiotics (no legal threshold stablished). Consequently, the functional unit (FU) of the case study is:
“The treatment of 1m3 of polluted groundwater”
This functional unit is the recommended in the Product Category Rule (PCR) for “site remediation and clean up services, soil and groundwater” product category classification: UN CPC 94413.
Alternatively, another functional unit has been considered given the significant performance differences in well water production among the technologies assessed:
“The production of 1m3 of drinking water”
The results of the assessments, which regarding the environmental assessment were quantified using the impact categories methods recommended in the Environmental Footprint (EF 3.1) developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, demonstrate that SPOT technology can compete with RO technology when applied in isolated small-scale water supplies. In that sense, the single biofiltering configuration of SPOT demonstrate significant better performance, environmental and economic, that the full stages configuration, mainly given the high impact that the photobioreactor suppose in both environmental and economic terms. Thus, always that the contamination concentrations of the groundwater allow its use, the biofiltering configuration process is recommended over full stages configurations to remediate nitrate contaminated water small-scale water supplies (Fig. 14).
During the time window regarding this report EURECAT’s personnel in charge of action C1 have been attending to regular internal consortium telco/face-to-face meetings and project’s events to better understand technical characteristics of SPOT solution and detect sustainability improvement opportunities for the SPOT technology (ecodesign), and to disseminate the objectives and results of the project.
C2. Assessment of socio-economic impact.
The objective of this action is to perform a socio-economic assessment of the innovative water-recovery scheme. The task developed were to identify business opportunities and potential customers and the geographic area where they are located. Measure the direct and indirect impacts of potential solutions to be adopted. Assess the contribution to development, stakeholder engagement levels, and establish priorities to build a solid business hypothesis. Evaluate the economic feasibility of the Life SPOT project solution.To engage in discussions with potential stakeholders interested in treatment systems tested by the LifeSPOT project
Potential users have been identified through surveys sent to different sectors. The analysis has been done in Catalonia.
C3. Monitoring and measuring LIFE project performance indicators.
During this period, revision of the KPI included in the proposal and new indicators calculation and updated on the webtool has been done.
The criteria for the KPIs selection were those related to the environmental topic of the Life Spot project, which is the water treatment with nature-based solution, resource use efficiency, and circular economy. Also, some indicators are mandatory. In part 7, Table 6 shows the selected KPI indicators to monitor the impact of the project's actions and estimated values.
