The FloWAT project, which stands for "Floating treatment Wetland for Agri-food effluent tertiary Treatment", aims to reduce polluting emissions from pre-treated wastewater discharge from the agri-food sector by integrating a floating wetland into existing lagoon systems to act as an additional physical and biological filter.
IMT Atlantique is coordinating the project, which includes the construction, equipment and monitoring of the experimental site, as well as the development of dimensioning tools for developing the floating marsh, provided by our partner company SVITEC. FloWat is a project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and is in line with several sustainable development objectives.
FloWat will be presented at WETPOL 2021, an international conference that brings together scientists, engineers and other experts in water quality improvement, specifically geared towards wetlands. But for now, you can discover the site in the following video, presented by the researchers heading up the project: Claire Gerente and Karine Borne from the GEPEA laboratory, which is part of the Department of Energy Systems and Environment (DSEE) at IMT Atlantique.
Improving the efficiency of a floating marsh
FloWAT aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a floating wetland in dealing with pollutants in agri-food wastewater. The experimental site was built and equipped in 2020. Monitoring began in 2021 and will continue until 2022 in order to use the data collected to develop structure design. One of the objectives of the project is to improve the "conventional" floating marsh to remove greater quantities of phosphorus, which could be recovered for later reuse, thus reducing pressure on this depletable resource.
The project could lead to the development of a robust and marketable product: the first floating marsh which can be easily dismantled and recycled. Nationally, around 7,000 food companies could potentially use this technology.
by Pierre-Hervé VAILLANT
