Terrestrial Applications
MELiSSA was built to answer a very specific problem: how to keep a crew alive on a multi-year mission without resupply from Earth. That same problem, closing the loop on air, water, food and waste, is arriving on Earth too. A population heading past nine billion by 2050, the depletion of fossil fuels, accelerating climate change, and the supply shocks of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine have all sharpened the same questions around food, water and energy independence that MELiSSA was designed to solve. The project’s working principle for its terrestrial partners is simple: there is no such thing as waste, and it helps to think like an astronaut.
Terrestrial application areas span the environment, the built environment, life sciences, the maritime sector and agrofood, and more than thirty-five years of MELiSSA research has already produced products and spin-off companies operating commercially in several of them.
Technologies in commercial use
A MELiSSA-derived water treatment technology now applied in wastewater plants across Europe, treating hundreds of millions of litres of water each year.
A sensor developed to monitor fermentation, used continuously in production by DAMM Bier and Freixenet, both world leaders in beer and sparkling wine.
Immediate, fully automated microbial identification, developed with the private sector (bioMérieux) for markets from hospitals to pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Air is drawn through a living wall of plants; pollutants are biologically degraded into water and carbon dioxide, and clean air is distributed through the building.
A new generation of photobioreactor producing 10–20 times more algal biomass than conventional systems, for feed, food, pharmaceutical and pigment applications.
Projects and demonstrators
A bacterium from the MELiSSA loop, codenamed “Red”, lowered LDL (“bad”) cholesterol by up to 50% in tests at the Dutch research institute TNO. The spin-off EzCOL BV, supported by ESA’s Business Incubation Centre in Noordwijk, worked with IPStar and SCK CEN to develop it as a food supplement or medicine.
A modular building system pairing solar energy, container housing, a MELiSSA-derived sanitation unit and an onsite food production unit, closing energy, water and food loops for a residential building.
A water treatment plant serving around 1,200 people, treating highly polluted ground water into safe potable water at low energy consumption.
An R&D facility dedicated to developing a sustainable microalgae industry, applying breakthrough culture technologies at demonstration scale.
A Horizon 2020 project treating brewery and household wastewater to create a circular brewery, with the ambition that no drop of water leaves the site except as beer.
Urine collected at the stadium is used as a nutrient source to fertilise the pitch, based on MELiSSA urine treatment technology, with Ghent University, HAS University of Applied Sciences and the Johan Cruijff ArenA.
A granted Horizon Europe project accelerating circular, decentralised water solutions for urban and peri-urban areas with limited infrastructure, drawing on 23 pilots to prove scalability and resilience. The MELiSSA Foundation participates as a partner; the project started in January 2026.
OASiS: a circular data centre concept
The Foundation is developing OASiS (Output As a Source, Integrated Sustainably), a concept that applies MELiSSA’s closed-loop principles to data centres. Data centres discharge large volumes of low-grade heat, CO₂-bearing exhaust and process water. OASiS links two proven biological processes, anaerobic digestion and algal cultivation, to turn those waste streams into biogas and power, biofertiliser, algal biomass, clean water and crops. The concept is at an early, exploratory stage, with no site selected.
OASiS, AQUA STADIA and other initiatives → Contact us about OASiS →