LEQUIA PANAMMOX® reactor integrated in UdG Research and Innovation Park landscape
Since July 2026, UdG Research and Innovation Park has a new element in its outdoors: a stainless-steel column placed next to Jaume Casademont building. This element, beyond the visual effect that has on the landscape, explains relevant part of LEQUIA research group’s history and milestone (and, as a result, also of the Park’s).
As displayed on the plaque, the column is a biological cylindric reactor SBR for wastewater treatment. During 2010-2020 it was used within the framework of several collaborative research projects with company CESPA GR to investigate the removal of nitrogen compounds from landfill leachates and develop the Panammox® technology.
The development of this technology is one of the most significant achievements of LEQUIA, with several high impact scientific publications and doctoral theses associated. Panammox® technology consists of a two-step partial nitritation/anammox process, with the optimal configuration to treat such a nitrogen-rich and complex wastewater like landfill leachates. CESPA GR (currently integrated in Prezero) applied successfully the Panammox® technology in Reus urban landfill.
Over the years, our research group has continued applying its expertise in partial nitritation and anammox processes to other fields, such as urban wastewater treatment. Nevertheless, the development and demonstration of Panammox® process still holds a privileged position in the group’s history. On the one hand, it positioned LEQUIA as a reference research group in anammox process on the international scene. On the other, it was the culmination of a long-standing collaboration with a large enterprise like CESPA GR.
In 2026 the group donated Panammox® column, already fallen into disuse, to UdG Research and Innovation Park. The Park placed the column in its facilities’ outdoors as a way of showing the research and transfer activity that is carried out. To LEQUIA, this means a great opportunity to explain part of our history and of those researchers that contributed to built it up.