Das Projekt "Advanced bipolar membrane processes for remediation of highly saline waste water streams (NEW ED)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von RWTH Aachen University, Aachener Verfahrenstechnik, Lehrstuhl für Chemische Verfahrenstechnik durchgeführt. Objective: NEW ED aims at closing industrial water cycles and reducing the amount of waste water streams with highly concentrated salt loads stemming from a broad range of industrial production processes by exploiting the waste components (salts) and transforming them to valuable products. This will be achieved by developing new micro- to nano-porous bipolar membranes for bipolar electrodialysis (BPMED), a new membrane module concept and by integrating this new technology into relevant production processes. The bipolar membrane process produces acids and bases from their corresponding salts by dissociating water at the interface within the bipolar membranes. However, BPMED so far has been applied only in niche markets due to limitations of the current state of membrane and process development. Major drawbacks of the classic BPMED process are low product purity, limited current density and formation of metal hydroxides at or in the bipolar membrane. The objective of this project is to overcome these limitations by developing a new bipolar membrane and membrane module with active, i.e. convective instead of diffusive water transport to the transition layer of the bipolar membranes, where water dissociation takes place. The key feature of the innovative new bipolar membranes is a nano- to micro-porous and at the same time ion conducting intermediate transition layer, through which water is convectively transported from the side into the transition layer. The porous transition layer may have either the character of a cation or an anion exchanger. Several promising intermediate layer materials together with different monopolar ion-exchange layers will be tested and characterized. Membrane manufacturing and new module concepts will be investigated to exploit the full potential of the new bipolar membrane technique. Integration of the developed membranes and modules into relevant production processes is an essential part of the project.
Das Projekt "Glass Recovering Revolution: High performance Optical Sorter for glass collection from Waste (SEEGLASS)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Picvisa Machine Vision Systems SL durchgeführt. The amount of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in the EU28 reached 245 million tons in 2012. Nowadays, Europe directives for waste management are more restrictive each year (e.g Landfill Directive 1999/31/EC), but unfortunately, landfill disposal still represents 34% of total MSW generated. On the other hand, citizen awareness as well as the high fees operators pay for landfill disposal, have helped to greatly increase the percentage for recycling from 18% in 1995, to 42% in 2012.
However, 40% of all the glass waste ends up in mixed MSW plants (which typically contain 7% of glass). Instead of being disposed of in selective-waste collection, it ends up in landfills or is composted/incinerated with the remnant waste.
We have developed SEEGLASS, a high performance optical sorter based on computer vision and a pneumatic rejection system. Our aim is to solve this non-environmentally friendly problem, while also offering our end-users additional revenues with this recovered material, which is not being exploited now (49€/tn glass). In addition, extracting this glass, will allow the treatment plants to significantly reduce costs from waste disposal fees (50€/Tonne EU average and rising). Payback for customers is estimated in only 19 months.
With this project we will (i) construct pre-conditioning process line, (ii) optimise our current SEEGLASS computer vision system as well as its mechanical and pneumatic design, to reach 80% glass recovery, with 99% purity, (iii) integrate both, the process line and the glass sorter solution into a demonstrator system, and (iv) validate its feasibility in-house with real MSW coming from different countries, as well as carry-out an 24/7 end-user validation.
We, PICVISA, will be the first company to recover the glass fraction in refined MSW worldwide (the niche market exists worldwide) selling Turn-key installations or only SEEGLASS units, contributing to a disruptive change in the sector.
Das Projekt "Supporting SME driven olive industry to comply with EU directives directives by turining olive oil waste water into energy through innovative bioreactor biotechnology, and extraction of olive oil industry by-products (EN-X-OLIVE)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Tecnologias Avanzadas Inspiralia SL durchgeführt. Technical scenario: Olive production is a significant economic sector in southern Member States, especially in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. However, the extraction process involved in olive oil production generates non biodegradable phytotoxic waste, and is therefore a significant source of pollution. Despite the introduction in the 90s of improved separation systems such as 2-phase centrifugation system, that reduce both water use and the quantities of liquid residues produced, the problems of waste toxicity, high energy consumption and the disposal of final residues remain. Olive oil production gives a final waste consisting in a solid and very humid by-product called alperujo (AL) or Olive wet cake. The problem of AL disposal has not been fully resolved and research into new technological procedures that permit its profitable use is needed. In addition, these wastes also contain valuable resources such as phenolic compounds, (approximately 53Prozent in olive oil mill waste waters), characterised by different biological activity properties which could be of interest in industry (i.e. their strong antioxidant activity). Current extraction of these compounds is not available from olive oil waste water, since technology is not fully developed and optimised to get large scale prototyping such as Pilot plant stage. Proposed solution: We propose a method focused on both treatment of olive waste waters with by anaerobic digestion transforming biomass into biogas, basically Methane, and extraction from liquid fraction of valuable products, such as polyphenols. vSynergy between these technologies will allow overcome technical barriers such as polyphenol inactivation of the digestion process, making more efficient the process and letting a higher purity of the waste water product.