The collaboration takes place within the DESAL+ Living Lab innovation ecosystem, a strategic hub for the validation and demonstration of technologies linked to the industrial water cycle, providing access to ITC’s experimental area in Pozo Izquierdo.
The Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias (ITC), a public entity attached to the Ministry of Universities, Science and Innovation of the Government of the Canary Islands, led by Migdalia Machín, has formalized a service provision contract with the French company PRONOE, specialized in solutions to enhance CO₂ removal in coastal waters. This agreement will allow the startup to set up and validate its technology in the ITC’s experimental facilities in Pozo Izquierdo, Gran Canaria.
The agreement was signed by Guayarmina Peña, CEO of ITC, and Nicolas Sdez, CEO and co-founder of PRONOE, as part of the services offered by the DESAL+ Living Lab, an open innovation ecosystem focused on emerging water technologies, coordinated by ITC with the support of the Government of the Canary Islands. The collaboration with PRONOE aligns with the strategic vision of the DESAL+ Living Lab, which not only aims to optimize the energy efficiency and sustainability of desalination processes but also to advance circular economy models, climate change mitigation, and adaptation to phenomena such as ocean acidification. The ITC’s Brine Valorisation Testbed will supply different feed streams, opening the door to maximize the performance and efficiency of PRONOE’s innovative technology.
PRONOE, an internationally recognized company, defines itself as a CO₂ removal company. Its approach is based on an innovative premise: to restore the ocean’s natural function as a carbon sink by treating coastal industrial effluents so that, once modified, they enhance the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater. The project in the Canary Islands is named Teydea, in tribute to the blue chaffinch, an endemic species and a symbol of the archipelago’s biodiversity. This initiative aims to demonstrate the technical and environmental viability of an automated water treatment system that restores the ocean’s capacity to capture and store CO₂. This highly scalable solution is designed to integrate easily into the operations of desalination plants and other coastal industrial facilities, with the goal of reducing the acidity of the water returned to the sea.
The CEO of ITC highlighted that “this alliance between ITC and PRONOE underscores the importance of having advanced technological infrastructure and real-operation validation environments—such as our brine valorisation testbed in Pozo Izquierdo—to accelerate the development of solutions with high environmental and economic impact.”
According to the CEO of the startup, “as a company dedicated to CO₂ removal and aiming to maximize the environmental and industrial co-benefits of our operations, we couldn’t imagine a better place to validate our technology than this testbed for desalination-related use cases.” He added: “If this demonstration proves successful, it will not only pave the way for the potential integration of our technology into the numerous desalination plants across the archipelago, but also for its scaling to other coastal industrial infrastructures.”
Canary Islands: a magnet for innovative companies in the water industry
With this new addition, the DESAL+ Living Lab ecosystem is further consolidated as an international benchmark for the development of applied knowledge in the efficient management and treatment of water resources, contributing to technological advancement and the specialization of the islands in a strategic industry for their sustainability.
The DESAL+ Living Lab platform, a public-private initiative driven by ITC with support from the Canary Islands Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society (ACIISI) and the Island Council of Gran Canaria, aims to generate knowledge, promote technological specialization, and develop practical solutions to address the challenges of the integrated water cycle in island territories.
English