Nuoro

At WPC Hofstade in Aalst, treated effluent from Aquafin's wastewater plant used to flow to rivers and the sea. Nuoro designed and built the full water reuse plant for Waterunie: a multi-barrier train of ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, activated carbon and UV disinfection, with monitoring that guarantees safe water before it enters the drinking water network. It went into service in June 2025, ahead of the dry summer, as Europe's first Direct Potable Reuse plant based on municipal wastewater. A pilot is testing aquifer storage to keep winter surplus underground for summer. Because the expansion was built into the design, a second line now doubles capacity with less than five days of production downtime for the mechanical works.

Aquafin's Ghent treatment plant, the second largest in Flanders, burned its sludge biogas in CHP units that were reaching end of life, at a time when nitrogen emissions were creating permitting problems on other sites. Nuoro won the tender and integrated a biogas upgrading unit, with French specialist Prodeval, so the gas now reaches natural gas quality and is injected into the Fluvius grid. Without CHP heat, the digesters needed a new heat source: Nuoro built a heat exchanger and heat pump that recover heat from the treated effluent, the first time this is done at this scale in a sludge digestion process. The installation has been running since June 2025.

For Azulatis, the industrial water subsidiary of De Watergroep, Nuoro designed and built a reuse installation for a food processing company, so it can cut its water use and stay supplied through drier Flemish summers. Bio-effluent goes through ultrafiltration with 28 membrane modules, UV disinfection and two reverse osmosis units, which bring it to drinking water quality for use in the plant. The installation had to fit inside an existing building, so the team first made a full 3D model of it. Nuoro also supplied the storage tanks and chemical dosing cabinets, and the plant can be extended to reduce the water footprint further.

Demand for Liefmans' fruit beers kept growing in Oudenaarde, but its yearly groundwater allowance is limited, some minerals in the groundwater exceed drinking water standards and the available city water is extremely hard. Nuoro designed and built a reverse osmosis plant with food-grade components that can treat both groundwater and city water. It replaces ion exchange softening and its salt discharge, uses a high-recovery design and CO₂ dosing instead of traditional acids, and adds redundant disinfection steps for microbiological safety.

• Total water losses of about 10%, even with very hard city water
• No more salt discharge from ion exchange regeneration
• Drinking water quality that consistently meets microbiological standards

As part of its renovation, the Trappist brewery of Westmalle wanted to produce its brewing and process water with minimal water loss and low energy use, without any compromise on quality. Nuoro compared technologies, then piloted ceramic ultrafiltration directly on the brewery's groundwater before designing the full-scale plant. Ceramic ultrafiltration after two-stage oxidation replaces the two-stage sand filters and polymeric UF, and closed-circuit reverse osmosis replaces the ion exchange softener for process water. Commissioning was planned for August and September 2026, with final delivery in October 2026.

• Far lower water losses in brewing water treatment
• No salt discharge from softener regeneration
• Technology validated in a pilot on the brewery's own groundwater

At the Keiberg Vossem business park in Tervuren, a drought pilot backed by the Flemish Blue Deal, rainwater from the whole site is collected in a basin. With Azulatis and De Watergroep, Nuoro built the treatment installation next to it: ultrafiltration removes microorganisms, and activated carbon removes dissolved organic substances such as PFAS, as well as colour and odour. The treated water returns to the companies through a second supply network. When there is more water than they need, it is stored underground through aquifer storage and recovery instead of overflowing into the sewer.

• Rainwater reused by several companies through one collective system
• PFAS and other micropollutants removed before reuse
• Surplus stored underground for dry periods instead of lost to the sewer