Evides Industriewater and three leading research institutes – the Technical University of Delft and two Chinese institutes, the National Engineering Center of Urban Water Resources of Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and the Provincial Academy of Environmental Science from Xi’An (PAES) – signed a cooperation agreement on November 25, 2011. This agreement is the start of the Sino-Dutch Research Program (SDRP) for the coal-chemical industry. The SDRP is funded by Evides Industriewater and has an initial term of five years.
The SDRP combines fundamental and applied research. It focuses on the development of new and improved advanced waste water treatment technologies, reuse technologies and zero liquid technologies. Evides aims at using the know-how to optimize operations at its existing chemical waste water treatment plants in the Netherlands. Additionally, Evides intends to design greenfield water treatment plants for the coal based chemical industry in China and Europe. The goal is to create process designs that contribute to substantially higher sustainability standards while achieving improved reliability at competitive costs. This is especially valuable for the chemical industry in the northern provinces Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner-Mongolia and Ningxia, where tough chemical challenges and water shortages demand new approaches to safeguard the availability of water while limiting the water footprint of the chemical industry on the environment.
Both HIT and PAES hold a track record in specific research and have field expertise with respect to environmental engineering and process integration in the industry. The TUD is famous for its involvement in the development of numerous advanced (waste) water treatment technologies and already is a long-standing partner of Evides Industriewater.
The signing ceremony has been held in Xi’an, thereby proving the importance of this province and its coal-based chemical industry as a generator for market driven research. With the ambassador of the Netherlands to China (Mr. Van Ee) as honorary guest the contracts have been signed by Peter Vermaat (CEO of Evides NV), Markus Flick (Director of Evides Industriewater), Prof. Shi Guangji (Director of HIT) and Dr. Zhang (Director of PAES).