Water-oriented Living Lab based on the UT3 Campus of the University of Toulouse, visited by students

On April 13, 2023, a visit of the neOCampus WOLL platform of bioinspired constructed wetlands for wastewater recycling was organized with the Pharmacy students of Toulouse 3 University. It was a tutorial on microbiological and chemical standards for water quality assessment within the framework of the teaching unit "Water and Health" of the 2nd year of Bachelor of Pharmacy. The main objective of this course was to compare the quality of water coming out of constructed wetlands with the natural water quality of the Garonne River and the Canal du Midi. These analyses are the first preliminary data obtained on the water quality of these new filters through the analyses of these students. We look forward to future years of analysis to assess the trend in performance of the constructed wetlands over time.

The neOCampus WOLL platform is a Water Oriented Living Lab in direct line of the application of #SmartCleanGarden concept (https://smartcleangarden.org/) launched in 2018, and within the #INOWASIA Erasmus+ project.

This WOLL has been built on the campus of Toulouse University (UT3) by EPURTEK company, end of 2022. It is composed of a large functional demonstrator of 32 m², 4 replicates of 5 m² pilots each and 10 mesocosms (0,5 m²) for testing research hypotheses. These infrastructures are fed with black domestic wastewaters coming from a teaching building of the campus since January 2023. The reuse purpose is for irrigation of orchades, or green spaces of the campus. The lack of water during summer drought is now rising public awareness rapidly, with regulation adaptation for making this reuse possible as an alternative source of water during summer.

From early 2023, the neOCampus WOLL platform is engaged in the research project BioROC (Nature-based biofilm control for functional water recycling in Occitanie) funded by the Region Occitanie (South France) and coordinated by Magali Gérino. The neOCampus WOLL platform is focusing on 2 types of demonstration :

• How the invertebrates such as earth worms are improving the purification capacity of the regular vertical planted filters
• How this nature based solution for waste water treatment can by suitable for water reuse regarding cost efficiency, GHG emission and deliverable water quality.

Many students are visiting this WOLL in the frame work of practical works of ecological engineering, or environmental sciences or pharmacy teaching units.