demo cases

The petro- and bio-chemical, pulp & paper, steel, and mining sectors are intensive water process industries that generate the most complex wastewaters. The relatively high concentration of recalcitrant organic matter, dissolved salts, heavy metals, or nutrients in these wastewaters result in challenging, complex, specialised, and costly technical solutions for the reuse of industrial wastewater. In addition, 20-50% of thermal energy used is lost, mainly in cooling processes and heat losses from equipment and products, representing an inefficient energy utilisation that generates greenhouse gas (GHG) direct emissions.

In the R3VOLUTION project, these problems are used as strategic opportunities to establish which value-added solutes can be recovered and which circularities within the industrial plants can be consolidated. Depending on the industrial facility and sector, the recovery of water, solutes and energy valorisation may have to be achieved in segregated streams (upstream process) or a centralised industrial wastewater treatment plant (downstream process).

Therefore, and to demonstrate R3VOLUTION’s solution capabilities and replicability potential across varied process industries, R3VOLUTION includes four physical demo cases at pilot scale targeting several up- and down-streams in various industries with high water discharges and complex effluents.