NOWELTIES · Joint PhD Laboratory for New Materials and Inventive Water Treatment Technologies. Harnessing resources effectively through innovation

Future challenges, including climate change and the resulting unpredictability of precipitation patterns and temporal or permanent water scarcity, generate a high diversity of demands on water treatment technologies obliging them to be able to cater towards a variety of source and target water qualities across multiple scales, depending on application. It is evident that this will generate a market pull towards the development of new water treatment technologies, employing new materials or improving the integration of existing technologies. However, the integration of research and innovation within the water sector needs to be supported by education of a new generation of interdisciplinary trained wastewater professionals able to face future challenges and implement wastewater-related directives in practice. The primary objective of NOWELTIES is to organize a platform (European Joint Doctorate) that will provide cutting edge training opportunities for the education of tomorrow`s water treatment experts. The core activity is the research programme (composed of 14 individual research projects) aimed at development of inventive water treatment technologies (advanced biological treatments, inovative oxidation processes, hybrid systems) that allow catering for the varied treatment demands for a plethora of interconnected streams arising from recycling loops. These technologies will be able to control contamination by organic micropollutants (OMPs) and improve recovery of water across a diversity of scales enabling a smart combination of decentralized and centralised approaches. Besides a holistic training in the field of wastewater treatment dealing with state-of-the-art technologies, experimental techniques and knowledge management methodologies, NOWELTIES will provide a unique training approach to learning complex complementary skills leading to independent and critical thinking which seeks for originality and innovation.