Aquarden’s SCWO system can offer significant savings compared to conventional treatment methods. The amount of money you will save depends on

• your wastewater type,
• the content of organics in your wastewater stream (the COD value),
• your wastewater volume,
• the possibilities of concentrating (pre-treating) the wastewater,
• current treatment methods,
• current transportion costs,
• recycling of resources (reuse of energy generated from the SCWO proces and reuse of treated water as process water), and
• current costs on energy and water.

Aquarden’s SCWO system is designed to handle the most problematic wastewater and is particularly suited to treat wastewater containing all types of organic compounds. Our SCWO system has successfully treated wastewater from a range of industries including solvents, detergents, medicinal waste, leachate, phenols, and others.

Our SCWO system is ideally suited to treat wastewater from companies in the following sectors:

• Pharmaceuticals
• Chemical and biotech
• Landfills
• Petrochemical
• Hospitals
• Industrial wastewater treatment plants (WWTP)
• Many other industries

The specifics of the SCWO-based treatment process required for your wastewater will depend on its exact composition. Contact us to learn more about a test of our purification performance on 50 L of your wastewater.

All organic compounds contained in the wastewater stream are destroyed and converted to CO₂ and water. Such organics could otherwise cause significant damage to human health and the environment. Typical harmful and toxic organic compounds destroyed include solvents, phenols, hormones, pesticides, hormone-disrupting compounds, and active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Some of the problematic substances we have successfully treated in our SCWO system is:

Acetone * – Amines – Aniline * – API (Active pharmaceutical ingredients) – BTEXN (Benzene, Toluens, Ethylbenzens, Xylens, Naphthalene) * – Chlorophenol (entachlorphenol, 2,4,6-Trichlorphenol, 2,3,4,6-Tetrachlorphenol) * – Cresylate – Cutting oil – Detergents – Dioxane * – DMAC (Dimethylacetamide) * – DMF (Dimethylformamide) * – EDTA * – Emulgator oil – Estrogen – Heavy metals (inc. Mercury) * – Hydrocarbons – Methanole * – Methylglycol * – Naphtalene * – Nitrobenzene* – NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone) * – Octylphenolethoxylate * – Organic solvents * – PAH (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) * – PEG (Polyethylene glycol) * – Perkolate/leachate – Phenols * – n-Propanol * – Solvents – THF (Tetrahydrofuran) *

* The compound appears on:
– DK EPA’s list of undesirable substances (LOUS) and/or
– EUs PRTR-list of hazardous chemical substances and/or
– DK EPA’s ABC-evaluation (in Danish)

A SCWO solution from Aquarden effectively destroys all organic and toxic components, and at the same time saves on money and resources. The key benefits at a glance are:

• Efficiency Complete elimination of environmentally hazardous substances. No dilution, but destruction!
• Discharge End-product is pure water – direct discharge to receiving water bodies
• Emissions No toxic bi-products or emissions
• Environment and resources Energy-efficient process with reuse of water and energy
• Logistics Either onsite units or local cleaning stations
• System Fully automated, compact and modular, short residence time, continuous process
• Business model Price per treated m3 of wastewater incl. maintenance, service and support (leasing)
• Economy Competitive pricing. Reuse of resources

Click here for a detailed list of benefits.

Our standard design delivers a reactor throughput of 180 L/h but the effective wastewater treatment capacity can be much larger. Actual treated wastewater volume may easily exceed 100,000 m3 per year depending on:

• Size and number of SCWO reactors
• Pre and post-treatment

In many cases wastewater can be concentrated using pre-treatment methods such as reverse osmosis or nanofiltration. As an example, leachate can normally be concentrated by a factor of 20 resulting in an increase in the effective treatment accordingly.

Incorporating a concentration step into the treatment process is a option for many types of wastewater. In the case of other capacity requirements, Aquarden offers custom designed systems that meet specific customer needs. It is also possible to install several units in parallel to raise throughput capacity.

The treated water from the SCWO process is completely clean. No organics, salts, or heavy metals remain in the water following treatment in the SCWO reactor. The treated water can be disposed of through:

• the sewage system,
• discharged into to sea, or
• reused as process water.

The opportunity of reusing resources is a key element of Aquarden’s solutions. The SCWO-process often generates more kWh than it consumes, and excess energy can be transformed into central heating, or converted to electricity. On top of that the treated water can be used as process water.

The result can be substantial bottom-line savings – and of course a cleaner environment.

Aquarden’s SCWO treatment systems are ideal for on-site wastewater treatment. The benefits of treating wastewater onsite instead of at remote biological or incineration treatment facilities are significant:

• Treatment of your wastewater at the source of pollution.
• Elimination of high transport costs to remote treatment facilities
• No need for wastewater removal logistics and administration
• No need to pay for the expensive disposal of harmful organic and other toxic compounds
• Elimination of wastewater bottlenecks in your production processes with integrated SCWO purification
• Full control of your wastewater stream using a system dimensioned to meet your needs

Read more about the key benefits of Aquarden’s SCWO systems.

Concentrated salts extracted from the SCWO process must be handled in different ways depending on the composition of the wastewater.

If the concentrate contains heavy metals or other harmful compounds, it will often need to be treated further. In such cases the concentrate only represents a small fraction of the total volume of treated wastewater so the challenge of further treating the concentrate is on a much smaller scale than that of the original wastewater stream.

If the concentrate only contains harmless compounds it may be disposed of in the same way as the treated water, such as through the sewage system, discharged to the sea, or reused as process water.