A project led by Wolfgang Dieter Gerstlberger, Professor at the Department of Business Administration at Tallinn University of Technology, has received €810,000 in the second funding round of the TemTA programme. Working with industry partners and professional associations, the project will explore ways to treat water associated with deposited oil shale ash and recover valuable substances from it.
The project, Circular Utilisation of Processing Residues: Valorisation of Legacy Oil-Shale Ash Waters, will be carried out in cooperation with Enefit OÜ, the Estonian Chemical Industry Association and the Estonian Mining Industry Association. Preparations for signing the funding agreement are currently under way. TemTA projects will run until 31 August 2029.
According to Gerstlberger, the project addresses two practical challenges at the same time. First, it aims to reduce the cost of treating industrial wastewater residues. Second, it seeks to create new business opportunities by recovering usable chemical substances from the water. In the future, these substances could be used, for example, in cleaning processes at manufacturing facilities.
“We will develop and test a range of technical solutions both for treating industrial wastewater residues and for recovering usable chemical substances from them. Initially, our work will focus on Estonia, but the testing and development of these solutions could later be expanded to other countries,” said project leader Wolfgang Dieter Gerstlberger.
The Department of Business Administration connects technology with business opportunities
TalTech’s Department of Business Administration will assess the market potential of the solutions under development, analyse their potential sustainability impacts and develop suitable business models. The department is also responsible for coordinating the overall project management. This will link the development of technical solutions with the question of how they can be transformed into practical and economically viable applications.
The project’s industrial partners and other interested companies in Estonia and abroad are expected to be among the main beneficiaries of its results. The findings will also provide policymakers with knowledge on how to mitigate a significant waste-management challenge while opening up new business opportunities for companies.
TemTA brings research and business together
In the second funding round of the Estonian Research Council’s TemTA programme, 65 research and development projects received a total of €50.6 million in funding. The projects were selected from 112 applications and focus on the valorisation of local resources, digital solutions, health technologies, and smart and sustainable energy solutions.
The projects funded in the second round involve 13 research institutions, 184 companies and organisations, and 121 doctoral students or early-career researchers. Including the first funding round, the TemTA programme has now supported 113 projects with a total of €103.4 million.
The programme is built around the specific needs of companies and industry sectors. In preparation for the second funding round, companies and organisations submitted nearly 300 development challenges that researchers and their partners will work together to address.
Further information: The TemTA programme and funded projects on the Estonian Research Council’s website.
The project is funded by Estonian Research Council through Thematic Research and Development Programmes (TEM-TA) with co-funding from the European Union and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (project no TEM-TA267).