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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PureWater (Feasibility study for industrial scale-up of the novel high-efficiency biocompatible and easy-to-operate water treatment membrane.)

Teaser

Summary

The progressive industrialization and urbanization along with climate change have seriously affected global water resources thereby threatening human health .
Among other contaminants, the heavy metal ions and metal cyanides of both natural and industrial origins are particularly harmful because of their non-biodegradability and long biological half-lives. These metals tend to accumulate in different body parts of the living organisms thereby causing severe diseases and disorders.

The water quality at the EU level are regulated through different Directives, imposing stringent requirements to the industrial and municipal waste water treatment plants with reference to the quality of the water discharged into surface-water, groundwater, and water-intake.

Additionally, in certain countries, (e.g. Germany), further local regulations are being implemented, to force industries decreasing or even avoiding any pollutant emission (close loop water re-cycling).
To comply with these regulations, industrial and municipal water treatment plants introduce secondary and tertiary treatment technologies, based on several energy demanding and chemically polluting processing steps, which jointly guarantee for optimal purification of the waste water.

In the PureWater project we address 2 different heavy metal water pollution sources: natural and anthropogenic through filtration membranes produced with patented technology.

Natural pollution is caused by the heavy metals naturally present in the EarthÂ´s crust. When penetrating into drinking water, under certain conditions these metals become highly toxic, genotoxic, and carcinogenic, even in very low concentration if consumed over long period of time.

The anthropogenic heavy metal pollution is caused by industrial activities, above all the electroplating industry , as metal finishing involves several chemically enhanced techniques like cleaning, coating, plating, anodizing etc., that generate wastewater containing compounds and cyanides of Chromium, Gold, Zinc, Cuprum, Lead and Cadmium.

Our ambition is to become the global landmark in the water treatment technology, introducing a bio-based, universal, yet simple, cheap and scalable technology for water decontamination.
The PureWaterâ€™s mid-term ambition is to overcome all persisting challenges of water purification without requiring any modification of the existing pipelines: i) household purification of drinking water; ii) purification of industrial wastewater streams; iii) decontamination and purification of water contaminated from heavy metals and nuclear waste for agricultural purposes.

The overall objective of the feasibility study is the definition of the value proposition of the Pure Water technology, based on in-field trials to be carried out at the premises of several water treatment plants.

To this scope, during the 6 months of the project, different trials in real industrial conditions were run. Specifically:

- an extensive trial at large municipal water treatment company in Italy
- a comprehensive trial at a Swiss industry producing waste water containing heavy metals
- an early trial at a Hospital facility in Switzerland to test the removal capacity of radioactive metals

All the above trials have demonstrated the unprecedented capacity of the PureWater membranes to filter target metals from any feed water.

The result of the above studies have shown that, unlike to all the state-of-the-art technologies, PureWater membranes have the skill to efficiently (100% filtration) adsorb multiple heavy metal ions in a single step, without the need to post- or re-processing.

In fact, the market enquiry carried out during the Phase 1 project has demonstrated the general interest of the stakeholders toward the Pure Water technology.

However, to achieve the full industrialization of the membranes, several technological objectives are required to be reached, such as engineering of an infrastructure that can be accepted by all the w

Work performed

During the Phase 1 project, several activities were performed, including:

1. optimization of the product, i.e. balancing of active compounds share.

2. in-field trials with 3 different customers categories: industrial wastewater, municipal feed water, hospital wastewater

3. dissemination of the Pure Water concept through participation at events

4. extension of the existing product lines toward additional pollutants, like fluorides

5. development of an additional product line, based on granular solution instead of membrane technology

The Pure Water technology has gathered significant resonance among academia and involved users (more than 100 contacted during the Phase project).

Interest toward the implementation of the B2C product (bottle filters) has been expressed by world leading players, like NestlÃ¨, Britta etc.

Final results

Currently there is no filtering solution capable to capture all the pollutants in a single step.

In fact, state-of-the-art water treatment facilities include different treatment steps to achieve full purification of the feed water.

Any pollutant is treated separately through a specifically developed hardware and chemicals, thus making the entire water treatment process extremely complex and costly.

Pure Water membranes are able to adsorb and filter pollutants of every origin: chemicals, organic pollutants even Pharmaceuticals molecules.

This product, once industrialized, is poised to make a true revolution in the sector.