At its regular annual meeting in Hidria’s Technology Park in Koper, the team of the EU environmental project Life Hidaqua could for the first time see the recently built prototype of a new wastewater treatment plant live. This plant is an important contribution to protecting the environment and reducing the consumption of drinking water.
The partners of the project, which – apart from us – involves international experts from the Eurocat Institute and the Spanish company Hidroquimia, as well as the company Geologija Idrija, the ZAG Institute and the Jožef Stefan Institute, could for the first time see the solutions made possible by the newly developed Hidaqua device – from chemical and physical water purification to membrane solutions with ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis. At the moment, the plant is at the stage where the pipe system, the power supply and Hidria's internal IT system of energy and machine management need to be connected to it.
The water treatment plant that was developed as part of LIFE Hidaqua consists of two mobile containers, which will receive rainwater from the roof of the Hidria Mototec production hall, water from a nearby well – so-called brine –, and waste water from the Hidria Alutec treatment plant.
We plan to commission the plant in February in cooperation with its suppliers and our Spanish partners from Protecmed. These built the entire plant on a turnkey basis, based on the plan of our Spanish partners Hidroquimia. We expect that in the coming months, we will also carry out extensive tests which will help to optimise and determine the efficiency and cleaning capacity of the plant according to the different types of water that appear in the Hidria Technology Park in Koper.
Hidaqua makes it possible to clean alternative sources of water at our location in Koper, and this is a new step towards Hidria's independence from the use of drinking water from the Rižana waterworks for industrial purposes. Hidaqua has already attracted interest from key local stakeholders in the Koper Municipality as well as from various Slovenian companies which are interested to hear how the plant operates and what the results of the newly acquired system are. We plan to organise a public opening and presentation of the Life Hidaqua project for professionals and the wider interested public this year.