Objective
The project takes a multi-disciplinary approach involving the combination of microbiology, environmental engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry and electrochemistry.
The successful project would economically:
- reduce the metal ion concentrations down to 10 fg/L
- enable the European Union to meet its own water quality directives - recover and recycle clean water for reuse within industry
- recover the metals as separate metals for industrial use
Thus there will be no toxic metal waste disposal hazards.
Several of the present consortium came together in the last framework (EVWA-CT92-003) and have developed
a successful, very specific, almost total, removal of cadmium (down to 10 g/litre) with the metal being
recovered as virtually pure cadmium for reuse. This process will have limitations when applied to the mixed
metal situation of commonly occurring contaminated waters. Such mixtures could be Cu, Ni, Zn with Cd, Hg,
Pb, and a total removal of these would be advantageous in giving clear water, but if the metals were recovered
as a mixture then this would be of low value and require further refining. This refining would in turn generate
more pollution hazards.
To overcome these limitations we propose to:
a) absorb the metal ions on dead bacteria or fungi or mixtures thereof, obtaining partial
selection/absorption
b) selective or partially selective elution of the metal ions from the separated biomass
c) controlled potential electrolysis of the evaluates to give the individual metals
This is novel and we believe we are combining the best aspects of novel biosorption technology with the best
aspects of chemistry, chemical engineering and electrochemistry to produce a low energy consuming highly
efficient process to give clean water, recover separate metals with a good space time yield and low
environmental impact and cost.
This approach to removing and safety recycling mixtures of toxic metals as separate metals envisages a process
involving repeated re-use of the microbial sorbant. Bacterial, yeast and fungal biomass will be used together,
or in succession, to achieve maximum removal of the widest range of mixed metals. A degree of selectivity will
be achieved (a) at the biosorption step by the use of bacterial and fungal biomass exhibiting different biosorption
properties, (b) at the elution step by selective elution, (c) at the electrolysis stage by controlled potential
electrolysis.
The overall process will contain the following steps:
(a) obtaining metal-binding bacteria and fungi for initial plant charge and much smaller make-up;
(b) contacting contaminated water with biomass, leading to absorption of metal cations onto the biomass;
(c) separating the metal-loaded bacteria by flotation or flocculation and filtration;
(d) sending the liquid effluent (containing traces of the metal-loaded biomass) to a suitable polisher to
remove remaining traces of microbes and give metal-free water. Periodically the polisher is backwashed and the biomass returned to the system;
(e) eluting the metals from the flocculated and settled biomass by filter elution;
(f) electrolysing the dilute aqueous metal eluant to give metal and regenerate elution liquor for re-use;
(g) selling the metal powder for industrial use.
Steps (a), (b), (c), (e) and (f) are subject of this research project.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- natural scienceschemical scienceselectrochemistryelectrolysis
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- engineering and technologychemical engineering
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
NE2 4HH Newcastle - Upon Tyne
United Kingdom