Outlook

In 2019, two projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) started, which will present their initial results in the near future:

KonTriSol develops solutions for the technical, legal and economic obstacles to the use of nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) processes in drinking-water treatment. This includes the following fields of investigation: process engineering alternatives to NF/RO processes, antiscalants – assessment and alternatives, processing of concentrates/potential for the removal of environmental pollution, ecotoxicological and human toxicological assessment, legal and economic barriers, suitable solution strategies and the holistic assessment of action alternatives and transfer strategies in selected countries.

In Ultra-F the focus is on reducing the energy required to heat drinking water while main­taining hygienic safety. The core question is how the hygienically-safe operation of drinking-water installations in buildings with centralised drinking-water heating can be guaranteed even with a reduction in the temperature in the hot-water area (to save energy). The technology used here is ultrafiltration (UF) to remove bacteria. The aim is to prove the effectiveness of UF for hygienically-safe operation under energy-optimised conditions in drinking-water installations on a laboratory and pilot-plant scale as well as in actual residential buildings.