Inroads Being Made In Sustainable Wastewater Treatment

A new innovative approach to making wastewater treatment more sustainable has received a boost this month (May), with a funding injection of £4.7 million to help LAT Water commercialise its solutions.

According to The Engineer, the technology process involves separating and recovering clean water from contaminated industrial water through the use of waste heat. The system, which is highly scalable, can be installed to treat flows of over 1,000 cubic metres a day of effluent, which can drive up to 60 per cent cost savings while reducing CO2 emissions.

As the company explains, the new way of working can treat wastewater for a wide range of different applications, including wastewater from landfill sites. This can help with the odour associated with these sites, while reducing the need to transport waste elsewhere for treatment.

The system has already seen success at the Daxin landfill site in Shenyang, China, having been in operation now for more than two years. And a showcase facility has since been constructed at a Viridor site here in the UK, part of a 21-month pilot project at the Broadpath landfill in Devon.

This uses low-grade heat from landfill gas engines to concentrate leachate and extract water, supported by a government grant. It intends to achieve eco-friendly benefits in retaining water resources while bringing down emissions by a potential 80 per cent reduction in tankering requirements.

Discussing the funding from IW Capital, LAT Water CEO Mark Hardiman was quoted by the news source as saying: “IW share our direction, motivation and ambition, and we are excited to begin this partnership. This funding enables us to push forward our targets of providing innovative, low-cost solutions for wastewater treatment.”

IW’s CEO Luke Davis made further comments, saying how exciting it is to see how LAT Water is choosing to tackle a growing problem for industries all over the world, adding that the firm is now looking forward to supporting LAT and helping drive future growth.

Similarly, last year engineers at Brunel University received almost one million euros to come up with new water treatment, exhaust condensation and waste valorisation systems that would allow factories to recycle 30 per cent of their wastewater and heat.

Scientific director of the iWAYS project professor Hussam Jouhara explained at the time that industries release a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, 70 per cent of which come from heat generation.

But one of the ways to reduce the environmental footprint of this is to recover the heat that is generated and reuse it for other industrial processes. It’s thought that these new recycling technologies will slash water use by 30 per cent to 60 per cent, as well as reusing water and heat from humid gases by 30 per cent.

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