Objective
Objectives and content
Large and small companies have many problems ensuring that the levels of contaminants in waste water are within regulations. Whether the source of this water is municipal or industrial, the major contaminant is often heavy metals. This is particular true of waste water resulting from the mining, metal processing and surface treatment industries, in which a physico-chemical process is employed to reduce the concentrations of metal in the water to that of a few ppm.
To comply with new and future regulations concerning the environment a polishing technique to reduce these concentrations is proposed which will ensure cleaner European production technologies.
The principles of such a polishing technique were established in a Brite Basic Research project. These principles, in conjunction with the special regeneration system of DynaSand filters, will be applied to the treatment of high volume wastewater at low cost. The sand filter medium will be inoculated with metal biosorbing and bioprecipitating bacteria which remove the trace metals from the water through a process of precipitation. The biosorption and bioprecipitation events were already studied in a former Basic Research Brite project. This technology will result in a continuously operating sand filter producing a metal containing biosludge.
These metal loaded biosludges have the advantage that they are easily handled by the metal recycling industry compared to sludges from conventional technologies.
In order to develop clean production technologies where the metals are recycled completely, with minimal production of unwanted by-products and waste, two metal processing companies (Union-Minière and Montanwerke Brixlegg) will study and optimise the recycling of the metal loaded sludge in their pyrometallurgical treatment plants. Montanwerke Brixlegg will commercialize the recovery of heavy or precious metals from the biosludge generated by small companies Europe wide. End users (Union-Minière, Montanwerke Brixlegg, Skolnik and Consulting und Engineering ), working in the fields of metal processing, surface treatment and mining, are attempting to adapt the resulting technology to their own problems. Biodegradation of toxic organic materials which are frequently present in the waste waters in small concentrations will also be considered. The inoculated "DynaSand" regeration filter system and the metal recycling will be studied and tested up to demonstration level. The entire project is underpinned by specialist research teams in biosorption, bioprecipitation and biodegradation processes (University of Birmingham, Innsbruck and Athens, and VITO-Mol). The industrial partners asked VITO to use its experience for the coordination.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering waste management waste treatment processes recycling
- engineering and technology environmental engineering water treatment processes wastewater treatment processes
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
2400 Mol
Belgium
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.