Supercritical Treatment of Process Wastewaters from Surface Treatment Industry MEtals

Circular Materials has developed a sustainable technology to efficiently remove and recover the heavy metals present in industrial wastewaters, ideal for the surface treatment industry (in particular to recover polluting and toxic metals like chromium).While the state-of-the-art technologies generate toxic sludges to be confined to special landfills, with intrinsic risk of release of metals in the environment and groundwaters, our process operates in a completely different way.

By continuously mixing in a reactor a flow of wastewater with a flow of supercritical water, the metals precipitate as a solid powder that is easily removed from the aqueous phase.

This approach avoids the production of sludges (no product to dispose of), revolutionising the treatment sector and solving environmental issues. No chemicals are needed, and the operating costs are drastically reduced. Moreover, the recovered high-purity metals can be reused in the same application (perfect circular approach).