Yes, the IFTS’s Roger Ben Aïm Test Center is starting its own blog.
It may seem peculiar to accompany the Roger Ben Aïm Test Center’s construction, and later its activities, by a blog. But it is an enjoyable, spontaneous and fluid manner of delivering information about serious topics.
And to let you join in.
Founded in 2018 near Agen, at the Rouquet site to be specific, the Roger Ben Aïm Test Center is an experimentation platform for L’Institut de la Filtration et des Techniques Separatives. IFTS, presided over by Christophe Bonnin, was created in 1981 by Roger Ben Aïm, a university professor and researcher. It saw light of day thanks to the support, amongst others, of the Chambre of Commerce, the Lot-et-Garonne’s General Council, the Urban Community d’Agen, and the Aquitaine administrative region.
Currently directed by Vincent Edery, and Christophe Peuchot before him, IFTS is a love story about filters (not to be confused with philters), membranes, and other liquid/solid separation processes.
It is therefore not by chance that the Roger Ben Aïm Test Center, fruit of an entire team’s brainstorming, will hold up in Nouvelle Aquitaine, a stakeholder in this endeavor. Land of water and innovation, land of Montaigne and his Essays, the Nouvelle Aquitaine region is a fertile cradle. It is thus fitting that the Roger Ben Aïm Test Center will be built between a wastewater treatment plant and a drinking water plant.
The Roger Ben Aïm Test Center is a research and experimentation facility where pilots and industrial materials will be tested in real world waters of varying characteristics. The station will be connected to the water exiting the two neighboring “clean” and “dirty” water facilities. The Roger Ben Aïm Test Center abuts the Garonne and its lateral canal, an extension of the canal du Midi (which together form the “canal of two seas” between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean).
Nearby, at the foot of the Pont Canal, a coffee-bike shop just opened, in Agen’s old drinking water plant. The picturesque spot welcomes cyclists heading along the green pathways towards far away destinations. A highly symbolic place for the Roger Ben Aïm Test Center, whose international and environmental mission statements are obvious.
Manufacturers,water treatment specialists, suppliers, researchers, labs, institutions, users, and curious public, this blog is for you and will pride itself in taking note of your comments.
Together we will follow its construction, and we will comment on all interesting aspects of these processes which feed off a land irrigated by solid technical and scientific capabilities.