Membrane Crystallization for water and minerals recovery

Objectives

Sufficient water supply in South Africa is a huge problem and together with future risk of insufficient supply of other resources such as minerals, it emphasizes on improved research and development within these areas.

This project has three main drivers (i) supply shortage of water and critical elements (ii) turning waste streams into products under the logic of sustainable development and circular economy and (iii) comprehensive understanding of a novel crystallization process. The outcome of the project is a ready-to-use system for simultaneous recovery of fresh water and selected minerals from waste streams with the long-term objective to provide an alternative solution for water and resource supply from untraditional sources (wastewaters).

The project aims at recovering fresh water and strategic, valuable minerals from unconventional sources (industrial waste streams) by applying novel membrane crystallization (MCr) process. Shortage of water and some critical elements is already a threat for society in many parts of the world and especially South Africa suffers from water shortage. In the long term, we will provide alternatives to the traditional sources of water and raw materials; thus, our main objective is to establish a proof-of-concept at pilot-scale for recovery of fresh water and strategic minerals from waste streams.

The hypothesis of the project is that water and valuable minerals can be produced from waste streams in high-purity, ready-to-use form by applying membrane crystallization.

Funding source

This research is funded by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (MFA) through Danida Fellowship Centre (DFC) project no. 20-M01AAU (“Membrane crystallization for water and mineral recovery”).

Link to DFC project description