Collaboration with leaders in water treatment & concrete
The ferric chloride produced within the Re:Source programme with the add-on process is currently being validated by two of Sweden's biggest names for water treatment: chemical manufacturer Feralco and drinking water producer Sydvatten.
As a coagulant, ferric chloride is vital in large-scale operations to make water drinkable. And because this ferric chloride comes from a waste stream created through water treatment, it’s an ideal circular solution. What's more, it can be ready for application immediately. So, an Ash2Phos facility with the add-on that's in close proximity to a water treatment plant would have an even lower environmental impact due to shorter transport.
Meanwhile, the iron-free sand from the new add-on is being validated by Thomas Concrete, a global provider of concrete mix. The grey colouring seems to make the sand much more suitable as cement replacement in concrete manufacturing, and it’s considered to have great potential as a method for lowering overall carbon emissions from concrete production.
For Tunsu, such partnerships have not only been vital for proving the market applications of the upgraded outputs but also for providing invaluable input on adjusting to create a better product.
– Collaboration is always important, but it’s great to have this insight from the other stakeholder businesses because then you can design the best process by knowing what your users want and need. It’s much faster and better when you’re actually working together, he explains.
The potential to recover everything
The first commercial implementation of the new add-on process is evaluated for an Ash2Phos plant in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg. It recently received local approval, and there’s great potential for it to become a sustainable provider of a necessary and often imported resource to the country’s water treatment industry. When operational, if the Helsingborg plant includes this add-on; it could recover enough ferric chloride to meet most of Sweden’s needs.
Yet Tunsu says there’s another advantage to consider. Sure, the new add-on can produce a necessary element for a more circular method of creating drinking water.. And, certainly, it optimises the original Ash2Phos technology. But the combination of the add-on and Ash2Phos does more than any other method of phosphorus recovery on the market.
– Ash2Phos with the new add-on is the only solution out there that can recover all macrofractions in the ash as clean commercial compounds, he says.