Our world faces an urgent need for a greener industry with reduced water consumption and zero pollution, alleviating water scarcity problems. Membrane distillation (MD) is being explored for production of clean water from industrial waste streams in the steel, textile, food and other industries. Several challenges need to be overcome to achieve a full commercial market breakthrough for MD: Membrane wetting, scaling, and fouling. We plan to accept the challenges by using superhydrophobic membranes. Such membranes are also useful in oil-water separation, and a range of environmental applications. During the FET “HARMONIC” project, two RORs Max Planck-MPIP and NCSR-Demokritos developed complementary technologies for membrane superhydrophobicity, which impart extreme antiwetting, antiscaling and antifouling membranes. The technologies are based on plasma activation or plasma nanotexturing (NCSRD) followed by wet nanofilament growth (MPIP) or plasma deposition (NCSRD) for hydrophobization. Both institutions will advance their technology readiness level so the technology is validated - demonstrated in relevant environment (TRL 5-6), and will design, build, and test small scale pilot equipment for fabricating rolls of superhydrophobic membranes in a roll-to-roll format. For the upscaling of the technology NCSRD and MPIP, will cooperate with two industrial partners, namely Europlasma and SolSep respectively companies with large experience with roll-to-roll plasma or wet processes respectively. Moreover, they will team up with Aquastill, a manufacturer of commercial MD modules for industrial wastewater treatment. A market search and a business plan will be elaborated, for creating a spin-off company commercializing the superhydrophobic membranes, and processes. The range of applications will go well beyond MD.

MATChING goal is the reduction of cooling water demand in the energy sector through innovative technological solutions, to be demonstrated in thermal and geothermal power plants. The project targets include an overall saving of water withdrawal of 30% in thermal power generation, and a decrease of evaporative losses up to 15% in geothermal sector. The use of advanced and nano-technology based materials will be leveraged to make economically affordable water saving in power plants and pave the way to the market uptake. All technological areas of plant cooling systems will be affected: cooling tower, steam condenser, cooling water circuit and water conditioning. The use of alternative cooling fluids will be investigated to develop advanced hybrid cooling towers for geothermal high temperature power plants, and hybrid cooled binary cycles for low temperature geothermal fields, combining dry/wet cooling, and closed loop groundwater cooling. To increase available effective water supply at reasonable costs, alternative water sources will be exploited: different membrane based technologies will be used to re-cycle or re-use municipal, process and blow down waters. To improve cooling equipment robustness advanced materials and coatings for cooling tower and condensers will be investigated, allowing increasing concentration cycles or directly using aggressive fluids. Demonstration will take place in partner-owned industrial sites, operating pilot plants in intended environment and/or in demo scale, guaranteeing the achievement of TRL 6 for all the technologies. The demonstration activities and the partnership composition ensures the validation of suitable business models and the finalization of business plans, guaranteeing the technological transfer from industry to market, increasing competitiveness at European level, and impacting on water use in power generation sector.