Water and wastewater treatment company, Arvia Technology, has secured £4 million (US$ 5.96 million) in funding. for a series of demonstration industrial installations of its proprietary organics removal system based on the carbon allotrope, graphene.
Arvia’s process removes organics, emerging contaminants and micro-pollutants from wastewater and is regenerated in-situ in the UK company’s organics destruction cell (ODC) process. ODC comprises adsorption of emulsified organics onto dispersed graphene particles that are subsequently oxidised by passing an electric current through the settled bed of graphene. The technology was spun-out of Manchester University’s School of Chemical Engineering.
Arvia chief executive Mike Lodge said: “We now have in place the secure financial backing required to strengthen our team and launch Arvia’s game-changing products into the water sector.”
“We have numerous test units to deploy into the market and we are looking for early adopters to collaborate with Arvia in applying this technology, which is changing the boundaries of how water is treated.”
The ODCs can be configured according to the organics concentrations in a given waste stream to manage a range of flow volumes from a few cubic metres a day to over 2,000 cubic metres an hour the company said.
Arvia said it is now identifying companies in the industrial, pharmaceutical, herbicide and chemical sectors with problematic wastes. The field trial units can treat concentrations as low as 1 part per billion organics and flows of up to 2 m³/h.
According to Arvia, its units can remove and oxidise low, trace toxic and problematic pollutants. such as slug pesticides and endocrine-disrupting chemicals used in the pharmaceutical industry and personal care products.