Fujifilm (Holdings Corporation) is a global company with many production locations all around the world. The corporate philosophy is to help enhance the quality of life of people worldwide by using leading-edge technologies to provide top quality products and services that contribute to the enhancement of culture, science and industry, as well as improved health and environmental protection in society.

With 900 employees FUJIFILM Manufacturing Europe B.V. (FUJIFILM), located in Tilburg, the Netherlands, is one of the largest production sites outside Japan. FUJIFILM produces color paper and offset plates and accommodates a corporate R&D facility (Tilburg Research Laboratory, TRL) with 110 employees. Besides the color paper and offset plates, FUJIFILM develops and supplies membranes and membrane modules for the gas separation and water purification industry.

In 2006, FUJIFILM intensified its research for new products. TRL started R&D activities in the field of membranes design for sustainable energy and environment. Based on the core technologies, e.g., coating of thin functional layers and polymer chemistry, separation membranes for various industries were developed. The first achievements of FUJIFILM membrane technology were in the field of water purification. The development of a patented technology for the high-volume membranes production enables a breakthrough for cost-effective membranes resulting in lower total system and operational costs. FUJIFILM aims to meet the stringent demands in the drinking and waste water sector and renewable energy generation.

The R&D facility in Tilburg has excellent analytical and application capabilities, supporting breakthrough research activities, prototyping, pilot projects as well as scaling up and mass production of newly developed products.  

FUJIFILM continuously strives for innovative product development through co-creation with business partners and customers. To facilitate collaboration, a European Open Innovation Hub was opened in Tilburg. This is FUJIFILM’s third Open Innovation Hub, next to the other hubs in Tokyo (Japan) and Silicon Valley (USA).

Trunz Water Systems is a well established company in the desalination market, with presence in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific. Trunz Water Systems has converted into reality the vision of simple self-sufficient water treatment systems powered by renewable energy. This means that there are virtually no boundaries to using the systems anywhere in the world. The Trunz Technology Center is based in Steinach, Lake of Constance/Switzerland. It is equipped with cutting-edge facilities and employs experts in desalination processes, water treatment and renewable energies. The company was awarded the Swiss Export Award as well as the Swiss Excellence Product Award.

REDstack (REDSTACK), founded in 2005, is an innovative Dutch company. The shareholders of REDSTACK are A. Hak Blue Energy B.V., Alliander Participaties B.V. and W&F Technologies B.V. REDSTACK’s mission is to develop and commercialize reverse electrodialysis (RED) and related technologies.

Over the years REDSTACK has gained great expertise and experience in the fields of RED in general, and more specific, in integrated stack design and manufacturing.  Currently REDSTACK holds several patents and some of their employees have published extensively on RED related issues in peer reviewed journals, which reflects REDSTACK’s ambitions to be an innovative company putting a lot of resources in R&D.

The RED‐technology was first studied on lab scale and since 2014 REDSTACK is investigating RED under real world conditions in REDSTACK’s pilot research plant at the Afsluitdijk in the Netherlands, the first of its size in the world. Also, within the FP7 REAPower project, REDSTACK designed & built the stacks for a pilot using brine and sea/brackish water, which was successfully tested in Trapani, Italy. For the FP7 Capmix project, the prototype stack was designed and built by REDSTACK and field tested at the pilot research facility at the Afsluitdijk.

Over the years, and still, REDSTACK worked intensively together with many universities, research institutes and companies in the Netherlands and abroad. REDSTACK obtained several public grants to complement the substantial funds of REDSTACK’s shareholders, which enabled the company to invest greatly in R&D and bringing the RED-technology from the lab to the market.

Deukum GmbH (DEUKUM) is a German SME specialised in building plate and frame modules, like for example electrodialysis modules, modules for diffusion dialysis and modules for membrane distillation. DEUKUM supplies these modules for water treatment plants, wastewater treatment, recycling industry, and for other electrodialysis suppliers.

DEUKUM has manufacturing equipment (cutting, welding, screen-printing etc.) and experienced staff to produce these modules and uses different spacer materials between the membranes. Aside from manufacturing, DEUKUM also conducts the necessary engineering, installment, and service of these units at industrial sites and upon request several pilot/lab units have been made.

instalment has developed a new light weight electrodialysis module, which is showing a weight reduction from 600 kg (old style) to 140 kg (new light weight module).

In 2015 DEUKUM has already produced 26 of those new modules (from January to August) with an overall membrane area of more than 2200 m², which resulted in a significant increase for its turnover.

In 2009 DEUKUM started its first tests to use electrodialysis (ED) for sea- and brackish-water desalination powered by solar energy. A small demonstration unit was shown at the Intersolar exhibition in Munich.

Within the NODesERT project a larger pilot unit was built in 2012/2013 and installed within a pilot container. The unit was tested at the northern sea and is now set-up at its final destination in Egypt.

To produce potable water from brackish or sea-water with a low energy consumption using renewable energy is the main mission of the DEUKUM for the up-coming years.

Phaesun GmbH (PHAESUN) based in Memmingen/Germany has been specialising in the sale, service and installation of off-grid photovoltaic and wind power systems. The company was founded in 2001 with the support of 6 international shareholders, all active in the solar industry. Since then, Tobias Zwirner is working as Managing Director. PHAESUN started the business as wholesaler to deliver special components for PV Off-Grid systems to international business customers. The business activities have been extended and besides the wholesaling of components the project division for technical planning, system sizing and system integration is now the second pillar of PHAESUN activities. International project management, individual system development, technical support and purposeful training courses for customers complete the range of services offered.

From the beginning on, special focus was put on Off-Grid power supply, this means stand-alone systems without connection to an electricity grid. Off-Grid power supply is a special niche market within the solar trade; PHAESUN mainly covers the application areas of rural electrification, solar water pumping systems, the use of Off-Grid renewable energies for industrial applications as well as for the leisure market. The main target regions are Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. PHAESUN is closely working together with international NGOs and GOs as well as with local partner companies in the target countries with the aim to provide energy to non-electrified areas.

The PHAESUN sales and project activities are always accompanied by strong marketing, communication and training activities. PHAESUN develops own innovative marketing and communication tools to promote the company but also to promote concepts for rural electrification. Important milestones were the development of a web based catalogue to keep and structure a large data base of product related data. Furthermore PHAESUN is one of the first movers regarding the "productive use of energy". PHAESUN is developing the concept BOSS (Business Opportunities with Solar Systems). This concept targets entrepreneurs in rural areas of developing countries to use solar systems for income generation and thus supporting the commercial sector.

Since the foundation PHAESUN could perform a stable growth, both regarding the size of the company and regarding internationalisation strategy. In 2001 PHAESUN Asmara in Eritrea was opened, in 2005 Phaesun Panama SA. In 2010 Phaesun France SAS was founded as a 100% daughter company with main focus on industrial and pumping projects with an R & D department. Since 2014 Phaesun has a representation office at Ivory Coast and in 2015 Phaesun Middle East in Dubai was founded for the distribution of solar systems and components in the MENA region.

In 2015 PHAESUN had 30 employees based in Germany and additional 15 staff members in the international daughter companies and representations.

The European Desalination Society (EDS) is the continuation of the Working Party of Fresh Water from the Sea of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering founded 1962. Whereas it was first composed of one or two representatives of each European country, in 1993 the European Desalination Society was founded to include individual and corporate members. There are now over 1,000 members.

EDS is a Europe-wide organization including individuals, corporations, universities, research institutes, government agencies and all concerned with desalination and water treatment technology. EDS welcomes members from other regions outside Europe interested in furthering world-wide cooperation and exchange of information in the field of desalination and water treatment.

Below are listed the most relevant activities and resources of EDS that will be used by the project:

• EDS operates www.desline.com with over 31,000 addresses of individuals and over 6,000 industries, government entities and research institutions involved in desalination and water treatment.  It can be accessed by keyword, region, country or topic.  There is also a list of current events in the field. The site has over 6,000 visits/month and 600,000 hits/month. Through desline, mass e-mails are sent regularly to groups to be targeted or to about 20,000 of the 37,000 addresses. Special information is posted on the home page for prominence.
• EDS organises the following 3 conference series including scientific presentations and exhibits:

1. Desalination for the Environment: Clean Water and Energy
2. Euromed – Desalination for Clean Water and Energy, Cooperation among Mediterranean Countries of  Europe and the MENA region
3. Membranes in Drinking and Industrial Water Production

• EDS regularly has exhibit space in conferences of other important organizations like IWA, GWI, and IDA as well as exchange agreements with other societies
• Editor in Chief of the Desalination and Water Treatment  journal which publishes about 2,500 articles/year amounting to 25,000 pages/year in 57 issues with authors from 93 countries.  EDS will point to relevant papers published  in the journal
• EDS holds courses by experts where there is dissemination of information besides the course material itself. Courses are held throughout the year and are well attended.

The University of Palermo (UNIPA) Research Group at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, Gestionale, Informatica, Meccanica of Università di Palermo (Italy) has a strong track record in the fields of water technology and Desalination, non-conventional energy sources, electro-membrane processes and process integration, with focus on experimental analysis, process and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling and prototyping activities.

The high level of research carried out and the number of international cooperation activities have allowed the group to gain significant academic achievements, such as the invitation to edit two books on Desalination and Renewable Energies (titled “Solar Desalination for the 21st century”, 2007, and Seawater Desalination – Conventional and renewable energy processes, 2009, both published by Springer-Verlag), a number of invited speeches on desalination and salinity gradients power technologies, and eventually also to the award of the IChemE Senior Moulton Medal 2013 for the paper “Development of a Membrane Distillation module for solar energy seawater desalination” published in the journal Chemical Engineering Research and Design in 2012.

The research so far carried out has largely benefitted from a number of international research projects and collaborations. The UNIPA research unit participated in the past to the EU-funded MEDIRAS, PRODES and REAPower projects, and presently is working in the EU-H2020 RED-Heat-to-Power project.

In all of them, UNIPA has contributed with modelling activities, laboratory investigations, process & plant design, prototype installation and monitoring activities. In particular, in the REAPower project UNIPA has led the activities for the development of a 1kW salinity gradient power prototype based on the Reverse Electro Dialysis technology, being actually the first and unique prototype in the world successfully operating with highly concentrated brines and brackish waters as feed solutions at the Trapani saltworks site (Sicily, Italy).

Today Ghent University (UGENT) attracts over 41,000 students, with a foreign student population of about 4,000. In 2014, the university invested over 265 million Euros in research projects on behalf of public and private partners, and employed around 6,500 academic staff members. UGENT is in the top 100 of both the Shanghai (62) and Times ranking (118). The University has participated in more than 200 research projects in the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) and in 260 projects in the Seventh Framework Programme, of which 27 ERC grants and 26 Marie Curie Fellowships. UGENT coordinated 42 collaborative projects in FP7. Up till now, UGENT is under H2020 (the new Framework Programme (2014-2020)) involved in 60 projects, and coordinates 5 of them. Among these newly acquired projects, UGENT hosts 10 ERC grant holders and supervises 4 Marie Skłodowska Curie fellowships. The university provides excellent training opportunities to both young and experienced researchers, and awarded 596 PhD degrees in 2014 of which over 30% went to international young researchers. The university is one of the fastest growing European universities in terms of research capacity and productivity, and its commitment to European research excellence is reflected by the recent extension of the ‘European Office’ in its Research Office, i.e. the department overseeing, guiding and administering research projects.

The European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology (WETSUS) is performing research aiming for pre-competitive development of entirely new concepts and breakthrough technologies in the field of water treatment. At Wetsus, a unique environment is created where 90 companies worldwide and 20 EU knowledge institutes are participating to create innovative solutions to water-related problems. The institute carries out multidisciplinary research performed by 60 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who are mostly located in the Wetsus laboratories in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Wetsus has approximately 20 research themes: a.o. Desalination, Blue Energy, Advanced Water Technology, Resource Recovery, Phosphate Recovery.

AquaTT UETP CLG (AQUATT) is a SME specialising in dissemination, knowledge management and transfer, communication, training and outreach activities and project management. Founded in 1992 under the EU COMETT Programme as a University Enterprise Training Partnership (UETP) to help bridge the gap between science and industry, AQUATT has 23 years of experience working in scientific fields related to Marine, Food, Energy, Health and Environment, which are key sectors for Europe’s sustainability.

AQUATT coordinates the H2020 project COLUMBUS on knowledge transfer for Blue Growth (2015-2018), and is a work package leader in the H2020 projects ParaFishControl, SEACHANGE and AQUAEXCEL2020 as well as in over 15 FP7 projects. In addition, AQUATT was the coordinator of the Coordination and Support Action MarineTT (European Marine Research Knowledge Transfer and Uptake of Results), a flagship FP7 project that established successful knowledge management and transfer methodologies which are currently being implemented in several other FP7, H2020 and national projects. In parallel to its work supporting research, AQUATT has a long track record in the field of education and training, informing strategies, and creating networks to exchange best practice.

AQUATT works alongside Europe’s top researchers to help tackle major societal challenges by ensuring the new knowledge generated from EU research is effectively transferred, resulting in uptake and measurable impact.