The overall objective of the PHYCOVER project is to draw the scientific, technical and industrial contexts for an evolution of wastewater treatment plants, and urban wastewaters in particular. The project aims to identify an integrated and modular treatment process for the production of biogas while identifying opportunities to maximize the valorisation of residual material, the digestate. The method combines three modules. First, a high-rate algal pond is dedicated to the treatment of municipal wastewater. Then, an anaerobic digester capable of co- digesting biomass products (and others organic matter resources ) to significantly reduce biological and chemical contaminants while producing a sustainable energy as biogas is analysed. A final module aims to enhance the digestate valorisation to agricultural sectors (organic and mineral fertilizers) and cultures of high-value microalgae to aquaculture and green chemistry. Most recent studies indeed highlight the need to combine production of microalgae to liquid and gaseous effluents treatment, to decrease the cost and to limit the exogenous inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. However, there is currently no technology optimized solution for combining water purification and production of microalgae, while complying with discharge standards. To further enlarge the potential of industrial applicability of this approach, it is important to control the fate of pathogens organisms in effluents and the project PHYCOVER will tackle these aspects. Finally, biotic and abiotic potential emissions to the atmosphere associated with the deployment of mass cultivation systems must be evaluated to enrich Life Cycle Analysis approaches. To assess the resource recovery from waste and wastewater using this innovative approach, the PHYCOVER project will work on a number of scientific and technological obstacles. First, the selection of algal communities demonstrating a strong effluent treatment capacity and resilience of productivity considering the environmental fluctuations will be performed in Task 1 and studied at pilot scale, representative of the industrial potential of sewage treatment and biogas production. The specific study of biotic and abiotic emissions to the atmosphere as well as the assessment of hygienisation of the integrated process will be the subject of the work done in Task 2. The management of organic matter through anaerobic digestion will addressed in Task 3. Management methods and opportunities for the valorisation of the digestate as agricultural fertilizer and microalgae nutriment for green chemistry will be studied in Task 4. The assessment and prediction of the overall performances in terms of environmental and energy outputs will be assessed in Task 5, together with the optimal process design. Finally, a techno-economical and environmental assessment of the sector as a whole will be given in Task 6. Overall, the project will lead to scientific, technical and economic achievements that will contribute to the establishment of a new and innovative chain for the treatment and valorization of urban waste and wastewater.

The project " SP2R " (Sustainable Phosphate Recovery and Re-uses” aims at establishing, around a French leadership, an European partnership of professionals and structures the activities of which develop in the field of the use of the Phosphor and mainly Phosphates (P-PO4). This network will have for objective to implement innovative strategies for a sustainable management of P-PO4, integrating all the practices and the users, since the individual practices until the intensive activities, at every level of scale. This approach joins in the concept of circular economy which aims at to find solutions, by working at every level of the production line and the consumption, by looking for it more thrifty common strategies. This challenge meets one of the priority of the European program H2020, in the action SC14-2016-2017 "Innovative Actions for a more effective management of raw materials" of the societal challenge "Climate, efficiency of the resources and the raw materials". Our global approach of the problem of inventory managements in P-PO4 will associate skills, know-how and multidisciplinary controls of work with synergic answers to the economic, technological and scientific challenges. It is in this spirit that we wish to make our contribution to the European level in the management of a resource P-PO4, essential in the life but also the cause of environmental concern (diffuse pollution, eutrophication of lakes). More precisely, the objective of our consortium is to slow down the impoverishment of stocks, to limit the economic dependence of the non-producing consumer countries, to reduce the irremediable emissions of phosphates and so to limit the pollutions, to develop more effective technologies of recovery and recycling of the P-PO4, better adapted to the various sources of waste, to master better the life cycle of the used P-PO4. Knowing that more than 89 % of phosphates is used for agricultural applications and of food production, the 1st stake is to optimize and to develop technological processes for a total recovery of the P-PO4 stemming from liquid waste and from solid. We shall answer the scientific and technological challenges (weakness of the efficiencies on conversion and still too high energy current cost of the processes of chemical and biological dephosphatation, division into sectors of the solutions) by innovative strategies of traceability of the P-PO4 on all these activities, use of anion exchange inorganic membranes presenting extremely high selectivity towards phosphates. These materials (Layered Double Hydroxides (LDH), Green rusts (LDH FeII-FeIII) and calcined by-products) will be implemented, in an innovative way, as membranes or reactive suspensions for P-PO4 sequestration. The technology will be adapted to every type of effluents and will allow the separation of the P-PO4 immobilized and concentrated for later stages of reformulation. These P-PO4 loaded solids will be tested for their P-PO4 release performance, under field conditions, to estimate and optimize their fertilizing power. Finally, these LDH and green rusts phases can be integrated as activators into bioreactors designed for the conversion biomass of organic phosphates, according to one conditions operating already highlighted in laboratory. The support of the program MRSEI, will allow us to strengthen our already strongly multidisciplinary consortium, joined by an international industrial group (SAUR) of the domain of the water treatment and cleanup, by going to look for the missing partners (branch of industry, sector of the agricultural research, the industrialists of the chemistry) and identifying even better all the stakes and the bolts to build an ambitious answer as high as the challenge.