CEST2025

Surface water quality and availability have been drastically reducing globally because of environmental pollution from natural and manmade compounds, urban, industrial, and agricultural waste, and climate change. It is estimated that in Europe, water demand will go up by 30%, while water resources will reduce by 30% by the end of 2030. The persistent uncontrolled global blooming of toxic cyanobacteria is another contributing factor to restricted water resources. CYanoTech is a 27-month project that developed a novel, sustainable, and innovative management system for mitigating the effects of toxic cyanobacteria blooming in surface waters. The project addressed issues related to eutrophication, water scarcity, global warming, climate change, nutrient reclamation, sustainable agriculture, and food safety. This presentation will give a brief overview of the CYanoTech approach which comprises of the removal of the excess aquatic biomass (cyanobacteria cells and algae) from water with a low-energy non-mechanical separation technology, the co-digestion of livestock waste and aquatic biomass for the production of energy and marketable products (fertilizers-struvite), and the application of treated and untreated surface water in hydroponic cultures that produces safe for consumptions crops (cyanotoxins-free crops). The energy produced can potentially compensate for the total energy needs of the applied treatment processes, further reducing the system’s overall carbon footprint, making it self-sustainable. Life-Cycle-Analysis proved the reduced environmental footprint of the CYanoTech approach.