With a budget of 1.7 million euros and co-financed by 60% by the European Commission, the Life Seacan project was launched at the end of 2015 with the aim of demonstrating the application of two technologies based on biofilm processes for the treatment of wastewater from the fish canning industry. At the moment, it has not yet been definitively decided which cannery will host the prototype – the project’s execution period is three and a half years – but the team from the University of Vigo that is participating in the project has been carrying out preliminary sampling since last March with the aim of starting to test this methodology, assessing the possible environmental impact of an outfall of this nature and getting an idea of the temporal variability of the results.
This is one of the new developments reported this Friday at the workshop presenting a project, Life Seacan, which is coordinated by the company Cetaqua Galicia, and in which, in addition to the Vigo academic institution itself, the University of Santiago de Compostela and Cetaqua Barcelona participate as partners, entities that also have the collaboration of the National Association of Canned Fish, Anfaco-Cecopesca, whose general secretary, Manuel Vieites, also participated in this meeting today.
The meeting took place at the Toralla Marine Science Station and was attended by specialists from most of the participating entities. The director of the center, Jesús Souza Troncoso, professor in the Department of Ecology and Animal Biology and one of the researchers involved in the project, and the director of the Campus do Mar, Emilio Fernández, welcomed them. “We hope that the results of the project will contribute to solving, if possible, the problem of canning industry discharges and, if not, at least that they will help to substantially improve the quality of the waters from these discharges,” indicated the main person in charge of Campus do Mar, who referred to this problem as a “key” issue due to its implications at both an ecological and economic level, since these discharges are made to a common good, the aquatic system, with a multiplicity of uses: resource extraction, tourism, natural conservation… “If we act intelligently, we have enough talent within our system to make ourselves internationally visible and lead some of the areas of relevance in this field,” indicated Fernández.
In search of information and tools for better management of spills
Within the Life Seacan Project, the University of Vigo is the partner responsible for one of the implementation actions. This action consists of the analysis of the benthic ecosystem (associated with the seabed) in the area potentially affected by the outfall that discharges the wastewater from the canning plant in which the prototype treatment plant is installed. The objectives of this action are to detect and assess whether or not there is an impact on the ecosystem caused by the discharge of wastewater and, if there is such an impact, to identify which factors or characteristics of the discharge are affecting the ecosystem. In addition, it is also about assessing the effect of using the new purification systems on improving the environmental conditions of the area. “In this way, the action led by the University of Vigo facilitates one of the main measures of the environmental impact of the project”, explained researcher Fernando Aneiros, while insisting on the need to use the knowledge generated through these studies to provide the competent authorities with information and tools that help improve environmental management in relation to this type of discharge.
To achieve these objectives, the Vigo team is studying, both in areas potentially affected by the spills and in ‘control’ areas (“with the aim of comparing the results obtained in both”) and repeatedly over time (“to detect whether there is significant temporal variability in the results, as well as to evaluate the effect caused by the installation of the prototype”) different aspects and variables. “We have to study the close relationship between the benthic environment, the bottom, and the pelagic environment, that is, the water column”, explained Aneiros and Marina Gómez, another of the researchers involved in the project, in a very concise manner.
“The integration of the results related to benthic communities and those of the different environmental variables will allow a better understanding of the situation of the ecosystem, its functioning, the level of impact of wastewater and, if applicable, the way in which this impact takes place,” Aneiros pointed out.
The canned food production process is characterized by high water consumption.
The canning process is characterized by high water consumption (2 liters/can), which represents a total of 8.6 million cubic meters annually. The good health of the nearby marine ecosystem depends on the purification of this wastewater before it is discharged into the sea, and for this reason, the Life-Seacan project is committed to the use of biofilm processes, which are characterized by the purification of wastewater with an effluent of remarkably high quality and a simultaneous reduction in energy consumption (at least 20%) and carbon footprint (reduction of 25%).
Under this project and until February 2019, researchers from the different institutions involved will try to evaluate the potential of these innovative technologies for improving the quality of discharged water. These biofilm processes have been successfully applied in various industrial sectors, but have not yet been used on a real scale for canned fish effluents. To analyze their effectiveness, this project opted for Galicia, since 80% of Spanish canned fish companies are concentrated in the Rías Baixas and this sector represents 2.8% of Galician GDP.
Source: duvi
