On March 8-9th 2016 WATERCHAIN second partner meeting took place in Riga (Latvia). It was organised by Riga Technical university team. The participants were from Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (leader of the group) and all of the project partners from  Pyhäjärvi Institute, Turku University of Applied Sciences,  KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonian Environmental Research Centre,  Foundation «Institute for Environmental Solutions» and Åland Waterwork Ltd. The main discussions were related to different administrative issues, solutions for better collaboration between partners and current activities in project. RTU organised practical excursion to the Water Research laboratory and presented practical results from first period of  Waterchain project.

On 18th February Talis Juhna and Kamila Gruskevica participated in the LWWWWA seminar «The current in the water supply system management and in the drinking water quality assurance». Talis presented Water Research Laboratory, its team, projects and research area (water and energy). He also spoke about Water supply system disinfection(theory and practice). Kamila presented ideas about Drinking water quality impact on theiron pipe corrosion. In seminar also were representatives from «IP Riga» and Health Inspectorate, Public Health Division.

On February 11th Talis Juhna were in Cities and Water Conference in the Netherland (http://watercampus.nl/conference-programme/). In the conference he participated with «Rīgas ūdens» guidance. During his visit in Netherland he visited laboratories cooperation partners Wetsus centre – European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology (https://www.wetsus.nl/ ) .

From 12th to 13th of January 2016, Kamila Gruskevica and Kristina Tihomirova participated in Waterchain project meeting in Tallinn, Estonia. The meeting was aimed to discuss current progress in project (more info here) about Baltic Sea environmental issues, as well as in technological solutions aimed to save Baltic Sea environment. The meeting was very interesting and useful and included a practical excursion to the laboratory in Estonian Environmental Research Centre.

On 23th December 2015, PhD student Dainis Sudmalis from Wageningen University and Research Centre had presentation in WRL about his PhD topic «Anaerobic microbial granulation under saline conditions in UASB bioreactors». Dainis had started PhD at the Sub-department of Environmental Technology (ETE) in October 2015. The main idea whom Dainis would like to defend during his PhD is the possibility of anaerobic granular sludge formation in UASB reactors under highly saline conditions by application of stimulating factors to avoid adverse effects such as multi-valent cation leakage from the EPS and cell lysis due to osmotic up – shocks in the system. An integral part of the research will be the performance of bioreactors as well as the mechanisms of granule’s formation.