Development of a hybrid technology for treating recalcitrant water contaminants: assessing e-beam potential.

制造业在试图减少碳足迹的同时，面临着不断升级的资源限制、节约用水和废物处理方面的挑战。行业内越来越多的人意识到，要实现自然系统的效率还有很长的路要走，在自然系统中，水、金属和有机物等资源显然可以毫不费力地回收或转化为清洁能源。这是一个足够大的挑战，但更令人望而生畏的是，来自金属加工和电镀等关键制造过程的管道末端工业废水和垃圾渗滤液在化学上与高浓度混合，具有毒性，化学成分在时间上波动很大。到目前为止，此类废水一直被认为是严重的环境问题，处理成本高昂，并依赖于反渗透和超滤等高资本和高能源要求的技术。然而，随着气候变化和对自然资源越来越大的压力，行业的态度已经改变，现在正在推动资源回收和现场处理，以减少与运输相关的碳足迹。越来越令人担忧的是，人们越来越意识到，目前旨在通过管道末端回收顽固流出物的废水技术程序都是耗能和低效的。这需要在一个重要但被忽视的领域进行彻底的新思维。这项研究的目标是开发新的方法，特别是测试新的技术组合(生物催化、零价纳米Fe[nZVI]和电子束加速器)来处理顽固的和化学混合的工业废水。主要的重点是减少已开发过程的能源需求，并协调补充技术，以可持续地降解有机成分，并在回收水的同时，沉淀、固定和实现金属回收。将通过利用能够生物转化这些污染物的微生物来评估化学混合废水和受氯污染的地面的可处理性。这一步骤将去除废水中容易降解的成分，留下顽固的残留物，这些残留物将转移到随后的处理暴露中，包括添加零价纳米铁(NZVI)。这是一个活性很高的步骤，催化顽固残留物的化学分解，包括大分子聚合物和化学络合物，使它们更有利于最终的生物降解步骤。经过生物处理的顽固废水残留物也将通过暴露在电子束中进行处理，导致辐射分解，产生H+和OH自由基，导致强烈的还原和氧化条件，并使有机物变得更可用于微生物处理。NZVI与电子束的新颖组合，加上最后的生物降解步骤，我们相信将导致大多数顽固残留物的销毁。将建立平行的实验室测试，以确定所有三种处理方法(微生物、nZVI和电子束)对金属的化学状态、固定化和沉淀法回收的有效性。将调查广泛的废水，包括管道末端工业废水和受污染的地下水。一个关键问题将是将开发的将有机成分转化为有用产品的技术的可行性，金属回收是可行的、可扩展的，并且经过一些开发可以商业化。这项研究的主要重点将是电子束组件，特别是评估提高其效率、降低其能源需求的程序，因为这将是一项关键要求，才能在商业上可行。我们还将在治疗的生物降解部分结束时确定最有效的微生物细胞。

Manufacture is faced with the escalating challenges of resource limitation, conservation of water and the treatment of waste, whilst attempting to reduce its carbon foot-print. There is increasing realisation within industry that it is a long way from achieving the efficiency of natural systems where resources such as water, metals and organics are apparently effortlessly recycled or transformed to clean energy. This is challenging enough but it is even more daunting with the realisation that end-of-pipe industrial effluent from key manufacturing processes, such as metal working and plating, and landfill leachate are chemically mixed with high concentrations, are toxic and temporally fluctuate enormously in terms chemical composition. Until now such effluents have been considered to be significant environmental problems, costly to deal with and reliant on high capital and energy demanding technologies, such as reverse osmosis and ultra-filtration. However, with climate change and increasing pressure on natural resources industry's attitude has changed with the drive now on resource recovery and treatment on site, in order to reduce the carbon footprint associated with transportation. A growing concern is the increasing realisation that current wastewater technology procedures aimed at end-of-pipe recovery from recalcitrant effluent are all energy demanding and inefficient. This requires radical new thinking in an important but neglected area.The objective of this study is to develop new approaches and in particular test novel technological combinations (biocatalysis, zero valent nano-Fe [nZVI] and electron beam accelerators) for treating recalcitrant and chemically mixed industrial waste waters. The primary focus is to reduce the energy demand of the developed process and to harmonise the complementary technologies to sustainably degrade the organic component and precipitate, immobilise and enable metal recovery, whilst recovering the water. Chemically mixed wastewater and chlorine contaminated ground will be assessed for treatability by exploiting microbes able to biotransform such contaminants. This step will remove the readily degradable component of the effluent leaving the recalcitrant residues, that will be transferred to subsequent treatment exposures including addition of zero valent nano-Fe (nZVI). This is a highly reactive step, catalysing the chemical disintegration of recalcitrant residues, including large polymers and chemical complexes, so making them more conducive to a final biodegradation step. Biologically pre-treated recalcitrant effluent residues will also be treated by exposure to the e-beam, leading to radiolysis, production of H+ and OH radicals, resulting in vigorous reducing and oxidations conditions, and the organic becoming more bioavailable to microbiological treatment. The novel combination of nZVI with the e-beam, with a final biodegradation step, we believe will lead to the destruction of most recalcitrant residues. Parallel lab tests will be established to determine the effectiveness of all three treatments (microbiological, nZVI and e-beam) on the chemical state of the metals, immobilisation and recovery by precipitation.A broad range of waste waters will be investigated, both end-of-pipe industrial and contaminated ground-waters. A key issue will be the feasibility of converting developed technologies for transforming the organic component to useful products and recovery of the metals are feasible, scaleable and can with some development be commercialised.The primary focus of this study will be the e-beam component, in particular assessment of procedures for improving its efficiency, lowering its energy requirement since will be a key requirement in order to being commercially viable. We will also determine the most effective microbial cells at the end of the biodegradative component of the treatment.