Microalgas para la Producción Sostenible de Bioproductos y Agua Regenerada (AL4BIO).

The AL4BIO project aims at producing high-value bioproducts and reclaimed water in microalgaebased systems for tertiary wastewater treatment. The bioproducts include biopolymers, biological pigments, biostimulants, biopesticides and biogas, along with reclaimed water. This approach calls for a multidisciplinary research group, which is better suited by combining the expertise of two complementary groups in a coordinated proposal: the Environmental Engineering and Microbiology Research Group of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (GEMMA-UPC, Subproject 1) and the Chemical Engineering Department of the Universidad de Almería (DIQUAL, Subproject 2).

Objetivos: DIQUAL has a large experience on the design, construction and operation of microalgae-based bioprocesses both for high-value applications and wastewater treatment. This group has different pilot and demonstrative plants to study the production of microalgae and downstream processing, and obtain high-value products under real conditions. The group also has a fully equipped laboratory to characterize and evaluate the microalgae-based processes. DIQUAL will have the following external collaborators: an expert in energy engineering (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), an expert on valuable compounds extraction from microalgae (University of Jaen), and an expert on the evaluation of bioproducts for the enhancement of crops production and protection (Cajamar Foundation).