By Aonghus Mc Nabola
The Dwr Uisce project has been a wonderful journey of discovery, working with talented people to produce important results for the water-energy nexus challenge. It has also been an unusually long journey for me, really starting in 2010 with the Interreg Ireland Wales project HydroBPT and ending in June this year with the Dwr Uisce project. The Interreg Ireland Wales programme have been great supporters of our work and I am personally sorry to see this no longer continuing considering the very long history of collaboration between Ireland and Wales it has built up, over around 30 years.
The project has achieved a number of important results in hydropower energy recovery and in wastewater heat recovery. It has also positioned the researchers involved to be able to continue this work beyond the Dwr Uisce project.
We are pleased to be commencing work on new projects focusing on developing fish-friendly micro-hydropower energy storage systems with the support of the Science Foundation Ireland, National Challenge Fund. We are also pleased to be commencing work on the further full-scale development of wastewater heat recovery systems in existing wastewater treatment processes with the support of the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund.