Research programmes meeting the major challenges of the century

Recycling nappies with Happy Nappy

One million tonnes of nappies are thrown away in France every year. Together with wet wipes and other paper tissues, these nappies are included in the “sanitary textiles” waste category, which continues to fill up our dustbins. Each person in the country currently throws away 34 kilos of these materials, which equals 9% of household waste.

To reduce the environmental impact of this type of waste, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is currently working with SITA France‘s Major Projects department and ADEME to develop the 1^st pilot project to recycle used nappies.

Treating nanopollution

Nanotechnologies produce over 1,600 types of nanoparticles, a volume of several tonnes each year. Production is rapidly increasing and no strategy has yet been implemented to protect the environment and bodies of water from the resulting pollution.

To overcome this problem, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is currently running the Nanosep project, which aims to:

• anticipate the regulations to be adopted,
• develop an optimised treatment system for industrial effluents rich in nanoparticles.

The Group also took part in the Aquanano project to study the dissemination of nanoparticles in groundwater.

Controlling and developing methanisation

SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is investing in inter-departmental water and waste projects.  
The Group is also working on methanisation (biological fermentation using bacterial flora) and recovering the biogas produced. The aim is to recycle as much of the sewage sludge produced by the water treatment plants and collected organic waste as possible.

Under the scope of the biogas programme conducted by GDF SUEZ and SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT, CIRSEE has installed a biogas platform. This platform uses semi-industrial pilots in order to:

• improve methanisation processes,
• conduct in situ feasibility studies,
• start producing biogas on an industrial scale using biomass from various sources, with the aim of converting the energy generated by methane combustion into electricity via motors (energy recovery). This method of treating biogas currently accounts for 29% of the volumes produced by SlTA France sites.

Developing membrane-platform projects

SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is taking part in many projects involving low-pressure membrane technology (micro- and ultrafiltration):

• fundamental research on understanding the mechanism that causes membranes to silt up,
• contributing to the Nametech European project on grafting nanoparticles onto membranes to improve their performance,
• applied research projects aimed at qualifying current and future technologies (construction of a pilot testing platform to reproduce accelerated aging and an expert laboratory to assess the life expectancy of the membranes),
• feedback projects on membrane performance integrated into various water treatment processes (wastewater, sea water desalination, and water production plants).

Inter-departmental research: cities of the future

SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is a partner of the French Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (Scientific and Technical Centre for Construction) and its project to develop solutions for cities of the future. Faced with a recognised need for a sustainable management of water resources, the CSTB has created a research and testing platform that is unique in Europe: Aquasim.

CIRSEE plays a central role in the work of Aquasim, which deals with the local use or reuse of alternative resources and, in particular, a study relating to grey water and its potential calorific contribution.