CWC@PoliTO - Clean Water Center | Politecnico di Torino

PoliTO Interdepartmental Center for Sustainable Water Management

Water resources in the New Millennium

Water availability is increasingly compromised, and the quality of accessible water is steadily declining due to the combined impacts of climate change, population growth, and contamination processes. In this context, the CWC@PoliTO – Clean Water Center promotes innovative approaches and technologies to address the many challenges of sustainable water supply. The Center brings together expertise in materials engineering, fluid mechanics, renewable energy systems, monitoring technologies, and processes for the decontamination of water and aquatic ecosystems. It serves as a hub for collaboration and innovation, committed to converting research advancements into high-impact technological solutions for society, industry, and the environment.

Goals

Improve water quality and management, ensuring energy and food security
Design versatile solutions that serve the needs of civil society and industry

Key Data

0

Projects

0

National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) Projects

+

0

Research Contracts with Companies

Success stories

UE Project MEloDIZER

The Center coordinates MEloDIZER, a European project involving 18 partners from industry, academia, and public institutions. The goal is to scale up Membrane Distillation from an innovative method for desalination and purification of polluted water sources to a viable industrial-scale technology, promoting water reuse and desalination for the benefit of both industry and society.

Spring Onlus

The CWC supports and actively collaborates with Spring, a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental protection. Together, they promote environmental awareness in schools and lead a campaign involving scientists and philosophers from Turin to draft a Declaration of Water Rights, with initiatives extending to participation in the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino.

Sustainable Approaches to Cooling

Within CWC activities, the SMaLL research team has developed a device that cools indoor spaces without electricity. The results, published in Science Advances, highlight the use of water and salt, avoiding harmful chemicals and reinforcing the water-energy nexus. The sustainable device operates through natural processes such as capillarity and evaporation, requiring no energy-intensive pumps or maintenance.

Drinking Water in Space

In collaboration with Thales Alenia Space, the CWC is developing systems that enable space station crews to recover ultra-pure drinking water from urine and ambient humidity. As of 2023, research has focused on simulating and analyzing the current system and pre-designing a more compact, lightweight alternative to reduce launch costs. The long-term goal is to design and optimize a robust, energy-efficient, and cost-effective system capable of producing high-quality drinking water regardless of input conditions.