Technological projects portfolio

In an environment that is increasingly harsh, it is becoming essential to develop effective solutions for desalination of seawater and recycling of industrial waste water. The aim of the PICOS Project is to offer an innovative Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) water purification treatment with the possibility of recovery of materials.

The technological breakthrough involves developing a plasma process for low-temperature crystallization of ionic salts dissolved in seawater or industrial brine. The plasma will in fact create solvated ions with plasma-liquid interfaces. These well-known precursors will favour nucleation sites for crystal formation.

This technology has the potential to offer high energy performance, due to its specific action on dissolved salts.

The vast majority of current systems use either a thermal process, or a membrane to purify water. These technologies have certain inherent disadvantages, i.e. respectively a high energy cost and a non-zero environmental impact (chemical or heavy metal pollution), and management of brine.

A plasma crystallizer differs from the vast majority of technologies because it does not discharge brine but directly extracts the salts in order to recover them.

This technology appears particularly effective for very concentrated solutions (TDS 50-300 g/L), a range that is generally impossible using membrane techniques that work at lower concentrations.

This technology could be included in industrial processes for brine treatment with Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD). It could also offer a low energy cost solution to at least partly reduce the salinity of seawater in order to recover it.