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tional-professional sphere. Carmen Rodríguez, Director of People and Culture, presented the prize, a travel voucher worth 1,500 euros. Second Prize from the Jury The second prize went to Eugenio Marín, head of the Deep Purple/B- Ferst project of the Innovation de- partment in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz). His idea consists of the re- generation of urban and industrial wastewater by using cold ultraviolet mirrors to capture solar radiation. In addition to producing reclaimed water, this system will also produce energy for the wastewater treatment plants. Miguel Perea, the company’s Director of Customer Management and IT, presented him with a travel voucher worth 1,500 euros. Employee’s second prize The second prize for employees went to Gerardo Díaz Piélagos, in charge of EDAR in Asturias. The selected project proposes the development of a portable sludge dehydrator by means of a filter bag that reduces the cost of sludge management at the facilities and facilitates its handling. More than 900 employees took part in the open vote in which Gerardo Díaz was the winner. Gerardo recei- ved his 1,500 euros travel voucher from Santiago Lafuente, Aqualia’s Director of Spain. In the first edition of the awards, the winner was Patricio Hermosilla, plant manager at the WWTP in Medina del Campo (Valladolid), thanks to a pro- ject that simplified the construction of a sludge treatment and sanitisa- tion line. Jordi Palatsi, plant manager at the Lleida wastewater treatment plant, won the Jury’s runner-up pri- ze for a control system to reduce the time and speed up the management of sludge thickening at wastewater treatment plants. Finally, Andrés Sa- nabria, foreman at Aqualia in Puerto de la Cruz (Canary Islands), won the Employees’ Commendation with his mobile application project to unify all the existing remote-control systems in a more efficient and practical way for the operators. Aqualia’s “i4U” Innovation Awards promote creativity and inter- nal talent as one of the company’s fundamental values. The aim is to discover proposals that can be implemented in the com- pany’s operations to improve the quality, efficiency and sustai- nability of our activity. Félix Parra, CEO of Aqualia during his speech. Innovation Awards I N N O V A T I O N 67 I N N O V A T I O N