Aqua-mining for a circular economy: Cleaning wastewater by recovering valuable metals (ICURe Cohort 38 Team 16)

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Freshwater pollution by industrial and municipal wastewater causes approximately 2 million deaths annually. Among the harmful contaminants contained in wastewaters are often valuable and strategically important metals (e.g., gold, platinum, rare-earth metals), which can reach toxic concentrations and are often difficult and costly to remove. Hence, they are generally not effectively recovered but instead discharged and lost.An alternative to discharging these harmful metals into aquatic ecosystems, is using our multi-patented technology Selectal - a platform technology capable of selectively recovering an extensive array of metals from extremely difficult to treat process or waste streams. Seloxium achieves this at a cost, purity, scale, and speed not attainable using competing technologies. Seloxium helps mining, refining and industrial companies to achieve their environmental and social and governance (ESG) goals by (1) turning their wastewater into a highly profitable and sustainable source of valuable metals or by (2) improving the purity and hence, value of highly concentrated metal processing or mining streams. Mining valuable metals from wastewater using Selectal not only combats freshwater pollution but also turns effluent treatment plants into 'resource factories'. The recovered metals can be directly recycled and reused in industry, which not only alleviates supply concerns but also lowers the environmental footprint of the mining/refining industries used in their original production.