How serious is water pollution in our daily life environment? The United Nations Water Resources World Assessment report provides a astounding number of explanations: millions of tons of garbage are dumped into rivers, lakes and streams every day, and every liter of wastewater pollutes 8 litres of fresh water; all through Asia. Urban rivers are polluted; 40% of the US watershed is contaminated with processed food waste, metals, fertilizers and pesticides; only five of the 55 rivers in Europe are barely usable. In addition, 1.1 billion people worldwide currently lack access to safe drinking water. Obviously, human beings are caught in a deep and fragile sustainable development.
The initiators of water pollution are nothing but three major categories: industrial pollution, agricultural pollution and domestic pollution. Among them, industrial wastewater is the most criticized. According to China Industrial Information Network, in 2015, domestic industrial wastewater discharge was 20.15 billion tons, down 2% year-on-year. It is expected that industrial wastewater discharge will remain 2% in 2016-2020. However, despite the reduction in industrial wastewater discharge, the base is still very large. Moreover, the destruction of the natural environment by industrial wastewater and the destruction of the living environment are almost irreversible, just like the tragedy caused by the heavy metal pollution incident in the Danube in 2000.
Sewage treatment is also a global consensus issue, just like the trend of the sewage treatment PPP model led by the Chinese government. Other countries are also increasing investment in this area, especially the treatment of industrial wastewater. In this context, companies such as EcoWorth Tech's industrial wastewater treatment technology are “valued” first, just as domestic brokerages have predicted that by 2020, the sewage treatment industry as a whole will release more than 10,000 trillion yuan of market space. At the same time, they can also reflect the responsibility and value of the company at the height of sustainable development.
EcoWorth Tech (EWT) is a waste-processing Singapore startup that specializes in turning waste into reusable products. It also won a runner-up in the 2018 Asian Smart Hardware Competition. “We want to solve the problem of sewage filtration at the lowest cost,” said Andre Stolz, CEO of EcoWorth Tech. EWT commercializes an innovative sustainable technology called carbon fibre aerogel (CFA), developed at NTU and used to treat waste, especially organic matter. It is mainly for the adsorption of liquid pollutants in industrial wastewater. Its product form mainly includes filters, filter buckets and the like.
On a global scale, sustainable technologies can be used to reduce waste, turn waste into value-added products, eliminate the environmental impact of polluting industries, and meet the growing demand for clean water. Although a wide variety of purification techniques can be used, most techniques are extremely complex, expensive, and inefficient. In other words, it is challenging to remove large amounts of organic components of waste to acceptable levels of emissions. This technology has the potential to bring changes to the food waste industry, oil and gas purification and industrial wastewater treatment facilities.
“The cost of treating sewage, especially liquids, is very high, and the regulation in each country is becoming more and more strict. The wastewater contains a wide range of organic substances, so it is generally necessary to transport the wastewater to the off-site for treatment. The increase, due to the lack of water circulation system, this process requires additional costs. We are to solve this problem, seeking a low-cost, high-efficiency method to release the potential of wastewater, turning waste into treasure." Andre Stolz said carbon fiber aerogel Glue is such an ideal new material technology.
Carbon fiber aerogel is a highly water-absorptive material that is non-toxic, natural, and recyclable. It can be made from a variety of cellulosic based materials such as cotton or waste paper. Carbon fiber aerogels absorb various organic substances from wastewater. EWT's patented process heats the material to extremely high temperatures under controlled conditions and then applies the carbon fiber aerogel by incorporating the material into an industrial grade cartridge and acting as a filter. And customers can reuse the carbon fiber aerogel filter several times before recycling the carbon fiber aerogel filter.
How does carbon fiber aerogel work? First, it can absorb/remove organic matter from the wastewater. Once the carbon fiber aerogel is saturated, the organic matter can be recovered by extrusion or heating. This regenerates the carbon fiber aerogel for the next round of filtration. Such a process has two functions, one is to convert waste water from waste into water that can be safely released in the natural environment or used for industrial processing, and the other is to make the recovered organic matter commercially available. Biofuels.
Andre Stolz is proud of the technological innovations in carbon fiber aerogels that EcoWorth Tech has achieved. He said that EcoWorth Tech has professors from Nanyang Technological University as the chief technology consultant, and has a lot of explorations in the application innovation of new materials. “Our product can absorb up to 190 times its own weight, its absorption capacity is 100 times that of a typical product, and its cost is 20 times lower, saving 50% compared to traditional solutions.” Andre Stolz said.
Currently, EcoWorth Tech provides customers with end-to-end customized solutions that sell equipment, filter buckets or integrate systems into plant processes and help them with system commissioning and ongoing maintenance. Its customers come from the chemical processing industry, as well as factory waste treatment, instrument oil and gas industry.
“Our goal is that the water treated by the product can be discharged directly into the sea.” Andre Stolz said that industrial wastewater treatment is difficult to turn into human drinking water, but it can be safely integrated into nature. Contribution. In addition, it is reported that EcoWorth Tech completed a S$1 million seed round financing in 2017 and is currently seeking the next round of financing.
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