Close-up of the rotor and stator of a technical device
Image: Ronny Clasing
Brief description of the project
As a result of the increase in global population and in standard of living, of demography, industry, and agriculture, ever-growing amounts of chemicals, pharmaceuticals and other persistent organic pollutants are finding their way into the environment. These pollutants build up in the water because they frequently cannot be sufficiently degraded or held back in treatment plants due to their nature, or because a direct discharge into the environment takes place. Despite their low concentration in the μmol–nmol range, they can develop adverse effects on flora and fauna. The processes needed to prevent this problem in the long run need to be innovative, decentralised, scalable, and efficient. They need to be able to degrade or hold back pollutants both unselectively (broadband effect) and as exhaustively as possible.
The goal of the project is the development and optimization of an innovative treatment process to eliminate trace elements from wastewater. Unlike present processes that are based on cavitation, the planned design will allow a scale-up up to industrial scales and especially emphasize synergy effects between individual process elements. This approach will make an unselective treatment possible even if pollutant molecules are persistent, and thus be very distinct from the current state of the art of the technology (ozonation, activated carbon). To reach these goals, a new ultrasonics-assisted stator-rotor-cavitation reactor is being developed. The additional application of ozone is supposed to further expand the deployment scope and enhance the efficiency. This way, high degradation rates of >99% will be reached at maximum energy efficiency.
