Currently, there is uncertainty about emissions of pharmaceuticals into larger closed ecosystems that are at risk such as the Baltic Sea. There is an increasing need for selecting the right strategies on advanced wastewater treatment. This study analysed 35 pharmaceuticals and iodinated X-ray contrast media in effluents from 82 Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) across Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden. Measured concentrations from Finland and Denmark were compared to predicted effluent concentrations using different levels of refinement. The concentrations predicted by the Total Residue Approach, as proposed by the European Medicines Agency, correlated with R(2) of 0.18 and 0.031 to measured ones for Denmark and Finland, respectively and the predicted data were significantly higher than the measured ones. These correlations improved substantially to R(2) of 0.72 and 0.74 after adjusting for estimated human excretion rates and further to R(2) = 0.91 and 0.78 with the inclusion of removal rates in WWTPs. Temporal analysis of compound variations in a closely monitored WWTP showed minimal fluctuation over days and weeks for most compounds but revealed weekly shifts in iodinated X-ray contrast media due to emergency-only operations at X-ray clinics during weekends and an abrupt seasonal change for gabapentin. The findings underscore the limitations of current predictive models and findings (...) demonstrate how these methodologies can be refined by incorporating human pharmaceutical excretion/metabolization as well as removal in wastewater treatment plants to more accurately forecast pharmaceutical levels in aquatic environments.

D7.4 describes the innovation and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) management procedures within DWC. It introduces the concepts of Intellectual Property (IP), the types of protection rights as well as the IPR rules in the project. It summarizes the key procedures introduced in the Grant Agreement and Consortium Agreement documents. Finally, it explains the role of the innovation and IPR manager and the detailed activities that will be carried out to foster innovation and secure the protection of our key results. Compared to the previous versions, the IPR repository has been updated.

In the frame of the project Ultimate, eight workshops were conducted by the cross-cutting technology group leaders for water recycling, material recovery and energy recovery as well as in cooperation with the “stakeholder engagement” work package. In these workshops, the concepts of the case studies were discussed at an early stage of the project together with experts from other Horizon2020 projects such as NextGen, Smart-Plant, Run4life, Sea4value, Digital-water.city, Fiware4water, Water2Return and Aquaspice. In addition, the partners from our sister projects B-WaterSmart, Water Mining, Rewaise and Wider Uptake had been invited to share their opinion with us and to identify possible synergies for cooperation.