CONVERTING POLLUTANTS INTO VALUABLE ASSETS WITH NEAR ZERO COST – CIRCULAR ECONOMY AT ITS BEST!

WFI > Knowledge Center > CONVERTING POLLUTANTS INTO VALUABLE ASSETS WITH NEAR ZERO COST – CIRCULAR ECONOMY AT ITS BEST!

THE GLOBAL NEED

Globally, more than 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water; 5000 die every day from drinking contaminated water, and roughly 14 billion pounds of garbage – mostly plastic – is dumped into the ocean every year. Pollution kills more than 100 million mammals and 1 million seabirds every year, and people living in high-density air pollution areas have a 20% higher risk of dying from lung cancer than those who don’t.

The list is endless. The solution? A circular economy – the notion of creating an effective system where materials aren’t used just once and then discarded, but continuously flow around a ‘closed-loop’ system. To-date, many governments, global consumer brands, and industries have invested in trying to change today’s “take, make, dispose” mentality and in finding solutions that benefit all.

An excellent and pioneering example is Holland, where it is now prohibited to spread pig manure on the farms. The manure can either be recovered as a high-quality resource (Ammonia) or disposed to poor nutrient farms lands.

 

 

 

 

THE WFI VISION

Pollution has a massive impact on water worldwide, and WFI sees a circular economy as a priority in addressing the issues. The company’s vision is one of creating clear water value to enhance public health and sustainability. Rather than seeing water as an expendable resource, the goal is to achieve ultra-high water and wastewater reuse at near-zero cost while creating new revenue streams.

 

GAME-CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS

Efforts to close the economic loop to treat used materials and wastewater as renewable resources are finally coming from global decision-makers down to corporates and communities.

This effort concurs with an increased focus on business, technology, and science to achieve long-term solutions.

Another positive development is the drive for stakeholders across supply chains to find ways to work together and develop.

 

game-changing technologies that don’t just reduce waste but ensure that it can be appreciated and used as a renewable resource of clean water or a fertilizer through circular solutions.

WFI is one company achieving this through innovating thinking, robust investment in R&D resulting in breakthrough proprietary technologies via the TOXSORB, TRIPLE-T, and ROTEC business units, as well as leveraging top-notch devoted water expert teams.

 

NITRATE

Nitrate (oxidized dissolved nitrogen) contamination often appears in fertilizers in irrigation water, wastewater treatment plants, dairies, septic systems, and natural circumstances. The contaminated water leaks into the soil and then into water supplies from several sources. Although nitrate is a pollutant in water, it is also a valuable resource that can be converted into fertilizer.
Our solution for Nitrate [No3] conversion utilizes a conventional ion exchange (IX) process to remove the nitrate, producing clean, safe drinking water. The resulting brine is then fed into our proprietary carbon-based reactor, where the nitrate is eliminated from the brine and recovered as a high-quality potassium nitrate fertilizer. The clean, nitrate-free brine can then be reused for regeneration. This technique can be conducted at near-zero cost, shifting from savings to growth.

 

 

AMMONIA

Drawing energy from fermenting waste products, such as food, chicken and pig manure, as well as biogas, offers a path towards a ‘circular economy’ using products past the end of their service life. Biogas operators can’t manufacture sufficient gas since they rely on remaining of food from food & beverage factories, which cause fluctuations in gas and energy capacity they are able to produce.

 

 

WFI overcomes this problem by recovering Ammonia from raw chicken via the extraction of the raw substance through a chemical-free thermal alteration and ion exchange process, resulting in:

  1. Clean processed wastewater.
  2. Conversion of the substance for clean, high-quality fertilizer (over 99% purity grade Ammonium Bicarbonate).
  3. Utilized for agriculture, especially in acidic soils.
  4. New chemical-free energy source via biogas production.
  5. Use of the organic matter as a high calory substance – gaining 3 times as much as corn value, for increased biogas production.
  6. The farmers who struggle to keep their business beneficial, will be able to reduce cost to near zero and easily sustain their business.

When we use the biogas during the process, we enable the farmer to decrease the level of Ammonia concentration, thereby eliminating the toxicity. Now the bacteria operating in the biogas process are capable of exploiting the high energy of the manure in an efficient manner, hence generating even more energy. The treatment cost is subsidized while creating an additional revenue stream, achieving a near zero cost, in accordance with the circular economy model, shifting from savings to growth.

 

PERCHLORATE

Much has been written on the toxicological properties and dangers of perchlorate. TOXSORB has developed proprietary NSF-approved MAC solution for Perchlorate [ClO4] removal. Firstly, during the ‘polishing’ stage the MAC technology is uniquely able to both adsorb pollutants and chemically destroy the perchlorate, during regeneration resulting in non-toxic brine. This produces high-quality drinking water with extremely low OPEX.

Next, a high concentration (>20 ppm) of perchlorate is treated with precipitation technology. This technology removes the perchlorate from the solution and recovers it as high-quality potassium perchlorate, a potential additional revenue stream.

 

SOLAR PANELS

TRIPLE-T’s TAYA uses biological wastewater treatment technology which provides advanced reuse solutions. TAYA ECO solution is designed for municipal wastewater treatment or effluent polish for decentralized communities utilizing solar panels. It further decreases energy consumption and environmental impact while creating renewable energy sources.

 

KEY TAKEAWAY

Ofer Avidan, WFI & TOXSORB CEO & Founder, explains that “the case of chicken manure can become the classical model for other types of manure as well. Instead of handling waste that requires haulage in most cases, TOXSORBY by WFI Group has developed a revolutionary proprietary process that harvests the Ammonia from the manure, converting it from a polluted raw substance to a high-quality fertilizer of economic value.

We are proud to continue investing in our novel R&D and lead this extraordinary and revolutionary path worldwide. I trust this phenomenal model will provide an incentive for other companies to follow this path and make a better, healthier and more sustainable world.”

 

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