Ressource recovery from industrial waste water by cutting edge membrane technologies

ended

The ReWaCEM project aims at reducing water use, wastewater production, energy use, valuable metal resource recovery and water footprint by between 30-90% in the metal plating, galvanizing and printed circuit board industry. In order to achieve these goals, ReWaCem will adopt two cutting edge membrane technologies suitable for the requirements of closed material cycles approaches and recovery concepts in metal processing industry: Diffusion Dialysis (DD) and Membrane Distillation (MD) as an integrated hybrid process. This combination of existing technologies will be adapted to fit the requirements of 4 pilot demonstration sites in representative industrial applications of the metallurgical industry in order to evaluate the accomplishment of the ReWaCEM goals. Through the evaluation of the demonstration a highly attractive technological solution for low energy wastewater treatment will be available to be entered into the large and growing market of metal processing. This market will profit significantly from the technological outcome of the innovation action, with cost savings and environmental benefits as relevant rewards. In order to maximise impact, the project consortium was selected carefully to represent all relevant stakeholders in the quadrant of end users, scientific partners, associations and decision makers and SMEs. The consortium will establish a dissemination & exploitation board that will create a substantial network of interest groups from agencies, industry, research SMEs and research centres as well as universities. The successful exploitation of the results will lead to a post project up-scaling of the technology and a step by step market introduction. Part of ReWaCEM will be to mobilise all relevant stakeholders into promoting innovative membrane solutions for industrial water and resources management, leading to the effective implementation of European directives and policies while creating market opportunities for European industry and SMEs.