Clean Water. Pure Metals.
Circular Materials
At Circular Materials we have developed and patented a technology
to treat industrial wastewaters to precipitate heavy metals.
Quantitatively, with no production of sludges.
And we recover more than 98% of the dissolved metals.
To be fully circular.
The Challenge
Heavy Metals to the Environment
1 980 000 kg of heavy metals are released to the environment in Europe every year from industrial waste waters and waste water treatment plants. Arsenic, Cadmium Chromium Copper Lead Mercury Nickel and Zinc are the main elements discharged. Those elements are at the same time invaluable resources and harmful pollutants. Only 38 % of surface water bodies are in good chemical status.
8 Million Tons of Wastewaters in Italy
40% are processed through chemical-physical plants: a very old and messy technology, still the industry standard. Metals are separated through sludge precipitation, which is then sent to landfills. Sludges still represent 20-35% of initial water volumes. The problem is NOT solved but, moved to the landfills.
Landfill Saturation and Stricter Rules
Landfill saturation causes a tightening of the laws and regulations on emissions and on the quantity and quality of sludges received. This has an impact further upstream in the process, which results in increased treatment costs and reduced availability to treat new fluids. Directly impacting the wastewater treatment costs.
“Our intention is clear: we strive to provide you with a new tool, a new option to tackle your current challenges such as increased treatment costs, strictier regulation and difficult sustainability targets. And a new opportunity to recover metals from your spent baths. With the potential of turning them into novel materials.”
Dr. Marco Bersani, CEO
Our Solution
We use Supercritical Water to control the nucleation and precipitation of metals or metal oxides as fine powders, to treat heavily contaminated industrial wastewaters.
We recover more than 98% of the dissolved metals as powders, that can be upcycled to other industrial sectors.
At Circular Materials we have developed and patented a technology to treat wastewaters to quantitavely precipitate heavy metals, with no production of sludges.
We recover more than 98% of the dissolved metals as powders, that can be upcycled to other industrial sectors.
The solution is perfectly aligned with the Circular Economy logic: it allows a full recovery of contaminating metals and convert them to secondary raw materials.
Our solution is characterized by remarkable levels of Environmental Sustainability as:
- it requires only water and electrical energy as inputs
- it doesn’t produce sludges
- the treated waters contain very low concentrations of heavy metals
DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION?
Do you want to know more and test for free our innovative technology? Please fill in the form below and you will be contacted by one of our engineers to see how we can help you reduce your treatment cost, recover valuable resources and reduce your environmental footprint.