CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Deliverables
The purification of water and pollution control already constitute a prominent part of any industrial policy.
Heavy metals are a priority aim in this field and have been the motive of considerable effort of R&D in recent years.
Amongst the many aspects which together make up the environmental problem of these substances, there are two which are of particular significance in certain industrial sectors: the generally high costs of available purification systems (physical-chemical plants, ion exchange columns, washing in cascade, etc.) and the need to treat large volumes of effluents with contaminating elements found in low concentrations but which have a potentially accumulative or high toxicity effect.
The contaminating elements, which were the object of the study, are Cr, Cu, Ni and Zn. Cd was initially considered but has been discarded as an object of the study due to the gradual elimination of its use from the metal-finishing sector.
On the other hand, there is a wide range of natural minerals which are very abundant and relatively low cost, and which are well-known for their capacity to retain metallic ions through processes of sorption.
The objective of the project was to study the potential of a number of these minerals, namely: smectites, hormites, vermiculite, kaolinite, calcite, wollastonite and zeolites, which are available in the European Union, with a view to obtaining cheap, large capacity systems for the purification of industrial effluents contaminated by heavy metals.
The project consisted of three different but interrelated parts:
-Exhaustive study of the sorption capacity of easily accessible natural minerals.
-Development of methods and technology to improve the natural sorption capacity of the minerals by physical and chemical treatment.
-Development of applications to specific sectors (metal finishing and tanning), including the construction of prototypes.
Results obtained from the research have shown that several minerals have an adsorption and/or retention capacity for base metals ranging from 20 to >200 mg metal per gram of adsorbent. These results have determined the selection of four minerals to produce industrial filters.
The sorption efficiency of some minerals has been significantly improved by low-cost treatments, but not to an extent justifying applying the treatments when compared to the efficiency of raw materials.
The different prototypes constructed during the project cannot be categorized as commercial products. Further development will be required in order to optimize the industrial application of the results.
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