Useful Wastes: Brine transformation to circular economy
Nowadays, many sectors of the industry need high quality water. For this reason industries (chemistry, pharma, food industry, etc) apply reverse osmosis to the running water, wasting more of 30% from this water due to the dumping limit. Also they produce brines that salinize water courses causing environmental problems.
The Useful Wastes innovation is a physical-chemical treatment that treats the brines, producing up to 80% more fresh water and transforming the rest into a product for use in the industry itself. The product generated is NaOCl (bleach) at 1%. This NaOCl is safe, clean, useful and enough to kill microorganisms.
Technology demonstrated in relevant environment.
Representative model or prototype system, which is well beyond that of TRL 5, is tested in a relevant environment. Represents a major step up in a technology’s demonstrated readiness. Examples include testing a prototype in a high-fidelity laboratory environment or in a simulated operational environment.
Representative model or prototype system, which is well beyond that of TRL 5, is tested in a relevant environment. Represents a major step up in a technology’s demonstrated readiness. Examples include testing a prototype in a high-fidelity laboratory environment or in a simulated operational environment.
We are in TRL 6 because we have a first prototype operating and producing 2000 L/day NaOCl. We are testing another prototype that produces more than 6000 L/day and collaborating with companies to optimize the process.
How does it work?
The system consist mainly of two phases:
1) Physical-chemical treatment: First, the salts that interfere with the subsequent process are eliminated. After that, another reverse osmosis is performed. Because the salts have been eliminated, higher pressure can be applied and thanks to this, up to 80% of the water contained in that brine can be recovered. In addition to getting water, a concentration of the brine is produced, which will serve to generate the bleach in the next step.
2) In the second step, the rest of concentrated brine is taken and by electrochemistry it is transformed into 1% NaOCl (bleach).
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