Brines from industrial water recycling: new ways to resource recovery

Abstract

Stricter environmental regulation policies and freshwater as an increasingly valuable resource have led to global growth of zero liquid discharge (ZLD) processes in recent years. During this development, in addition to water, the recovery of recyclable materials, e.g. salts, from industrial wastewater and brines is considered more frequently. Within the framework of the HighCon research project, the subject of this study, a new ZLD process with the goal of pure single-salt recovery from industrial wastewater has been developed and investigated in a demonstrational setup at an industrial site. With regard to pure salts recovery, separating organic components is of great importance during the treatment of the concentrate arising from used water recycling. The removal of COD and of ions responsible for scaling worked very well using nanofiltration. The nanofiltration permeate containing the monovalent ions was pre-concentrated using electrodialysis and membrane distillation before selective crystallization for single-salt recovery was performed. An example economic case study for the newly developed ZLD process – based on demonstration results and considering optimization measures for a full-scale design – indicates that the costs are equal to those of a conventional ZLD process, which, however, does not provide inter alia the aforementioned benefit of single-salt recovery. HIGHLIGHTS Stricter environmental regulation policies and freshwater as an increasingly valuable resource are leading to a global growth of zero liquid discharge (ZLD) processes in recent years.; In the study, the results of a demonstrational setup at an industrial site for a newly developed concentrate treatment process are presented. This new ZLD process, named HighCon, has the goal of pure single-salt recovery from industrial wastewater.; The demonstration results show that separating organic components and monovalent ions worked out very well with nanofiltration in the HighCon process and recovering an organic-free salt mixture or – using selective crystallization – the separation of an organic-free single salt with >90% purity has been enabled.; In a cost analysis, the total specific costs have been calculated for the newly developed HighCon process and a comparable ZLD process. With approximately 4 €/m³, the results show that the specific costs are in the same range for both processes.; The HighCon process has the advantage of pure (single-)salt recovery over conventional ZLD generating the mixture of solid wastes. Recovery of resources is becoming increasingly important – economically and with regard to the closing of recoverable substance cycles.;

Keywords

• brine management
• cost analysis
• industrial wastewater
• resource recovery
• water reuse
• zero liquid discharge