Partnership Sand Filtration call open for pre-proposals

The previously announced Partnership Sand Filtration call is open for pre-proposals. Together with the drinking water companies Vitens and Dunea, the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (NWO AES/NWO TTW) finances insightful and innovative research in the application of slow and fast sand filters. Deadline for submitting pre-proposals is January 15, 2019. The submission of a pre-proposal is mandatory before submitting a full-proposal.

Funding is up to € 650,000. Together NWO Domain AES (€ 1.5 million), Dunea and Vitens (each € 750,000) have made a budget available of € 3 million. Of this budget, 5% is used to cover overhead costs of NWO. Besides, € 50,000 is reserved for programme related expenses. Therefore a total of € 2.8 million is available to fund projects. Scientists employed by Dutch (Technical) Universities and institutes eligible for funding by AES may apply. 

The Partnership programme aims at high capacity, robust, efficient and low cost production of drinking water based on sand filtration. The main objectives can be categorised in three interrelated areas:

• The development of mechanistic insights into the working principles of sand filtration;
• The development of reliable models for model-based control of sand filters;
• The development of new solutions/concepts to advance the performance of sand filters.

Through utilisation of the results obtained via these three research lines, the partners aim to reach substantial advancement in the field of sand filtration. Submitted projects should clearly present the potential for utilisation of the results by the drinking water sector as a whole.

November 28, 2018 there will be an information and matchmaking event about the call at the Dunea Pompstation in Scheveningen. More information about this event will soon be published. The deadline for submitting a full proposal is March 21, 2019.