For the fourth time, the EUREKA Lillehammer Award 2006 is being shared by two projects, both of which have developed technologies with outstanding environmental benefits. This is the fourth time such a double award has been made ? a clear indication of the exceptional standard of the competing projects. EUREKA E! 2497 EUROENVIRON BIOMAC has devised a vastly improved method of bacterial waste water treatment capable of degrading the most toxic and difficult pollutants. EUREKA E! 2625 EUROENVIRON ECDVAT's new electrochemical dyeing process allows re-use of materials, and substantial reduction in chemicals used and in waste discharged.

The 2006 EUREKA Lillehammer Award was presented today by Mrs K. Yrvin, Norwegian Vice-Minister of Industry at the biennial EUREKA Ministerial Conference in Prague. "It's a great surprise and pleasure for us," commented ECDVAT coordinator Professor Thomas Bechtold of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Enga Luye of the BIOMAC project, from Belair Biotech, Switzerland said: "It has been a great benefit to be part of a EUREKA project, and we are honoured to receive this award."

The EUROENVIRON BIOMAC project developed a new system for treating waste water using mixtures of bacteria in granular form, which can break down even the most toxic wastes or deal with high pollutant concentration. The new system uses 50% less energy than conventional treatment and will cost 30% less as the waste water can be treated significantly faster than before. Conventional treatment uses only a few bacterial strains and cannot always break down complex pollutant mixtures or high concentrations. The BIOMAC technology selects the best combination of bacteria for specific types of pollutants, and produces this mixture in a sufficiently large volume, while retaining the same mixture of strains. The computer-controlled system has been tested from the laboratory up to industrial scale through the EUREKA project, and is ready to upgrade existing workin
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Contact: Catherine Shiels
catherine.shiels@es.eureka.be
322-777-0969
EUREKA
9-Jun-2006

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