Wealth Creation from Waste With Zero DischargeTechnologies

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Waste Streams - Where the Value is Lost

In fact, the conventional way of effluent treatment kills the value inherent in the waste stream and disposes that rare commodity – water. All effluent, polluting streams are resource streams that are waiting for an innovative idea to unlock their potential. Profits can be earned by separating pure chemicals even from a wastewater stream, and thus overall profitability can be improved.

Since gas effluents invariably scrubbed into liquids and solids, generally, pose a localized problem of secure landfill/storage, it is the liquid effluent, particularly aqueous, that poses the biggest challenge. The solid waste also needs to be treated innovatively to generate value and simultaneously reduce damage to the environment.

Recovering Chemicals From Waste

Typically, the aqueous waste may contain inorganic chemicals and salts; organic chemicals; and heavy metals. Of these, the first two are more prevalent. Heavy metals can generally be well controlled and even if present, there are lucrative methods to recover them. Therefore, the focus here would be on the cost-effective recovery of inorganic and organic chemicals from waste streams, where they would be present in relatively low concentrations along with other entities.

In this context, four novel broad-based platform technologies are introduced that singly or in combination with other conventional operations can achieve ‘profitable zero discharge’. These technologies include chemical dewatering, reactive extraction, antisolvent crystallization and eutectic freeze crystallization. Various chemicals (organic as well as inorganic) are recovered in their pure form for recycling or sale. The operating costs are generally in the range of 10-40 per cent of the revenue generated (or cost saved) and the return on investment (RoI) is approximately 12 months.

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