Institution Description:
The University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) is a university for applied sciences designed to meet professional needs in education, research, and consulting. The nine schools of the FHNW maintain close links with society, culture, and industry, and its graduate, postgraduate, and continuing education focus on applied knowledge. Research and consulting activities are practice-oriented; we teach over 8,000 degree students and nearly 40,000 participants in continuing education.
The Institute for Ecopreneurship from the School of Life Sciences is involved in DEMEAU and includes four groups, i.e. Resources Management and Cleaner Production, Ecotoxicology, Environmental Biotechnology, and Environmental Engineering. Preventive measures and innovative environmental and biotechnological processes for emissions reduction (e.g. micropollutants and nanoparticles in sewage water), as well as optimised resource management methods are developed in the areas of environmental protection and advancement of ecological efficiency. We are an independent, competent research and development partner for the industry as well as international, national and regional institutions.
Involvement in DEMEAU:
The FHNW is the leader of work area WA5 and work package WP 5.2, which are focused on addressing and overcoming market barriers for novel technologies in the water sector. WP 5.2 will be based on results from WP 5.1, in which FHNW will formulate Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) for each studied novel technology. USPs will be based on results from Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Life Costing Assessments (LCC) conducted by DEMEAU partners. The combined output of these efforts in collaboration with our DEMEAU partners will be the formulation of recommendations for the actual uptake of novel technologies in the water sector. FHNW will also contribute to WP 2.2, in which the performance of Hybrid Ceramic Membrane Systems (HCMS) will be optimized, compared to state-of-the-art conventional water treatment systems, and tested in a decentralized greywater treatment project.