Pilot Projects

IQE is demonstrating the technical and economic feasibility of implementing a circular economy scheme in the silica industry to recover water, sodium sulphate, waste heat and alkalis in Zaragoza, Spain. Technologies such as nanofiltration, eutectic freeze crystallization and forward feed evaporation and electro dialysis with bipolar membranes are evaluated.

Silesian University of Technology is demonstrating the circular economy principles in the coal mining industry in Laziska Górne, Poland. The aim is to decrease the energy consumption by 50% compared to the energy consumption of a reverse osmosis-vapour compression system which represents current best practice.  The coal mine water, having salinity of ca. 23 g/L and rich in calcium sulphate, will be treated using integrated system consisting of nanofiltration, reverse osmosis and electrodialysis with the aim to recuperate valuable raw materials, such as concentrated brine, magnesium hydroxide, and high quality RO permeate.

The Demineralized Water Plant (DWP) in the Botlek area owned by EVIDES is a large-scale demonstration of the ZERO BRINE project using the technology ion exchange and membrane technology. The DWP consists of a combination of ion exchange and membrane technology: Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF),  Reverse Osmosis, Mixed Bed Ion Exchange. For both brine streams that are generated in this process, a circular economy solution will be developed in this WP.

The aim is to demonstrate the Nanofiltration – Evaporation concept for the treatment of ion exchange (IX) regenerate and RO concentrate at large industry scale as well as to demonstrate the Anionic Ion Exchange (IX) – Nanofiltration (NF) – Evaporation – Eutectic Freeze Crystallization (EFC) concept at demonstration scale. Part of the energy for the brine treatment comes from waste heat. Waste heat and wastewater streams will be combined in a multi-company site environment eliminating brine effluent (target: zero liquid discharge) of the industrial water supplier, recovering high purity magnesium products (target: magnesium purity >90%), NaCl solution and sulphate salts and recycling streams within the site (target: >70% internal recycling of materials recovered).