Veolia Shortlisted For Prestigious WIAA Award

Veolia Water Technologies has been shortlisted for the prestigious Most Innovative New Technology of the Year at this year’s Water Industry Achievement Awards. The listing is for AnoxKaldnes’ Cella™ Technology which produces bioplastics from sewage treatment sludge.

Bioplastics, based on polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) have been produced industrially by the  fermentation of sugars since the 1980s, but Cella™ converts organic matter (COD) in domestic residual streams such as wastewater, waste activated sludge, municipal organic wastes, and other industrial or agricultural wastes or by-products.

The first biopolymers were produced by Cella™ prototype plants in Belgium and Sweden in the autumn of 2011, and pilot plants are now also operating in The Netherlands and Denmark. Recent development work has focused on optimising conditions in the activated sludge process for the selective growth of biomass with PHA-storing capacity.

The product of the process, CellaPol™, is a feedstock that can be formulated into bioplastics as a replacement for fossil fuel derived plastics. Bioplastics have a broad range of applications from commodity products such as packaging, coatings, and utensils, all the way up to very specialized applications, such as composite materials for car bumpers. And they have the advantage that, being fully biodegradable, they can be recycled using the same process, closing the loop on the “circular economy”.

The WIAA Most Innovative New Technology of the Year winning entry will be announced at a gala dinner on the night of Tuesday 17 May at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole.

To learn more about Cella™ and the potential of this innovative technology visithttp://technomaps.veoliawatertechnologies.com/cella/en/ or register for  the SludgeTech 2016 conference at theUniversity of Surrey, Guildford on 27-29 June where Veolia’s Thomas Welander will be presenting a paper on Bio-polymer generation from wastewater.

About Veolia
Veolia group is the global leader in optimized resource management. With over 174 000 employees worldwide, the Group designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions that contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them.

In 2015, the Veolia group supplied 100 million people with drinking water and 63 million people with wastewater service, produced 63 million megawatt hours of energy and converted 42.9 million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy. Veolia Environnement (listed on Paris Euronext: VIE) recorded consolidated revenue of €25B ($30.3B) in 2015. For more information, visit www.veolia.com