Absolute Solution for Waste Water: Dynamic Nano Channels Processes

The new concept, which will be discussed in this chapter emerged from the observation that the wastewater contained, in fact, large quantities of elements with high added value, and primarily water, H2O. Then the problem to be solved is to sort these elements by using clean technologies that we draw from the whole set of the unit operations of Chemical Engineering. The possibilities offered by flourishing nanotechnologies are tremendous for the characterization of aqueous solutions and for the development of new processes as well. In fact, there is a wide variety of problems. In the 60s, the idea that nature was capable, if helped a little, to treat all wastewater was widespread because it was considered that the amounts released were small in comparison to the flow of the rivers and the vastness of the seas and oceans. The brutal fact that the vastness is only relative, came from CO2 emissions, reducing the oxygen available and the recent invasion of oil into the Gulf of Mexico that affects shores, the sea bottom and intermediate layers and this, in a large volume. In the past and more recently, the choice was made at large scale to collect and mix the wastewater for a global treatment, usually, municipal, which includes industrial, domestic and medical wastewater. In the context of sustainable development, attitudes change, the selective collection is allowable. But we must go further, much further, recognizing the presence of different resources in each type of waste water and therefore to extract them as much as possible at source, or reuse them on site or to market them after being given an economical value. Nanotechnology can perform these upgrades. Intensive processes allow to perform these small-scale operations at the site of production, reducing the mixing and transport. In this chapter we will relate progress made over the last 50 years, whether scientific, technological, sociological, ecological, emphasizing nanoscience and miniaturization aspects as well as the integration of expertise in the process management. We will expose specific cases, chosen as the most demonstrative of those we treated, for example: treatment of contaminated soil after a burial or a discharge, deliberate or not, of pollutants; treatment of municipal wastewater resulting from the collection of releases that uses water as a transport vector, regeneration of glycols in airports depending on weather conditions and others; reuse of brines for dyeing textile fibers; the transfer of copper removed during the etching of printed circuits to the plating of new plates.