Water Resources and Industry最新文献

The European Union's Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) program aims to foster innovative environmental technologies to reach the market and reassure potential users. This paper presents an investigation of using ETV for three technologies, being developed within the EU Zero Brine research and innovation project. The technologies were designed to recover high quality water, salts and minerals from brine solutions. The technologies in focus are the forward feed MED evaporator, the Multi Feed – Plug Flow Reactor Crystalliser and Eutectic Freeze Crystallization. The study sought to understand the challenges of the ETV process, the readiness and eligibility of technologies, and possible preparations within the project lifetime. Challenges identified included: understanding what sufficient market readiness is, and achieving this within the duration of a project (also linked to funding allocation for the ETV process); and developing suitable performance claims, supported with sufficient levels of test data. A simple framework is presented to aid the integration of ETV into the development process. It promotes the use of life cycle assessment to understand the environmental added value of the technology and aid the development of performance claims.

Released cesium-137 poses a serious threat to living organisms and the environment. As a radioactive substance, it can only be disposed by the greatest possible concentration and safe storage. In our work, a highly efficient sorbent @CuHCF/P (q_max = 143.6 ± 3.2 mg/g) composed of pectin (P) and modified copper hexacyanoferrate (@CuHCF) was prepared for the removal of cesium from aqueous solutions. Suitable modification of CuHCF generated a homogeneous and highly packed sorbent with active substances (up to 50%). The as-prepared sorbent exhibited a suitable bead shape (round, 2–4 mm diameter, wet form) for application in dynamic systems and allowed easy separation from the purified solution. @CuHCF/P sorbent showed high sorption capacity in seawater (q = 104.6 ± 3.5 mg/g) and stability over a wide range of pH (4-10) and temperatures (12 °C, 22 °C and 32 °C). In addition, @CuHCF was dust-free, and occupied little volume when dry. Therefore proposed sorbent can be successfully used to trap cesium ions.

Coal-mine effluent treatment has the potential to both reduce the environmental impact of the effluent and provide economic opportunities by recovering valuable minerals and clean water. In this study, we modeled a novel treatment process, which includes nanofiltration (NF), two-step crystallization, reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis (ED), multi-effect distillation (MED), and a NaCl crystallizer, and performed a techno-economic analysis of its full-scale implementation, using a circular economy approach. We estimated the thermal and electrical energy consumption to be 745.5 kWh_th/ton_NaCl and 565.1 kWh_el/ton_NaCl (or 13.6 kWh_th and 10.3 kWh_el per m³ of feed effluent), respectively. The levelized cost of the NaCl salt that accounts for the revenue from the plant's co-products (Mg(OH)₂, CaSO₄ and, pure water) was estimated to be 203 USD/ton_NaCl. The economic viability of the treatment chain can be improved by using renewable electricity sources, reducing the total expenditure on NF and RO, and integrating alternate technologies into the treatment plant.