Our guidebook on the subject of "wastewater-free production".

Currently, hardly anything is more present in chemistry than the discussions around the topic of PFAS and the pros and cons of a ban. Here you can read about what PFAS are, their benefits and their impact on nature and people. It also shows how efficiently and, above all, sustainably PFAS-containing process water can be treated using the vacuum distillation process.

Water is used in the production of almost any product, whether it is a car or a toothpick. The so-called industrial water generated in production processes is usually contaminated after the production process and polluted with heavy metals, oils or salts. This contaminated water can cause severe environmental damage if it is returned to the public supply without first being purified. It is therefore an efficient long-term strategy to purify the contaminated water directly in the facility where it was produced, since the contamination usually makes up a small fraction of about 2-3% in the wastewater and the purified water can be reused directly in the facility. And this is where vacuum distillation comes into use.

Vacuum distillation reliably and gently separates substances with different boiling points. For a vacuum distillation process to run reliably and for the separation process to deliver high-quality results, it is important that the vacuum in the evaporator is meticulously maintained. This places high demands on the vacuum pumps as well as on vacuum control and the choice of the correct, high-quality pump is a very important factor in a vacuum evaporation plant. Depending on the application, different vacuum pumps are used.

Which vacuum pumps are especially suitable for distillation purposes?

Reverse osmosis is already able to reduce the wastewater quantities by approx. 60-80%. The remaining retentate can then be further processed by downstream vacuum distillation. Finally, the concentrate, i.e., the residue left over after the vacuum evaporator, corresponds to only 5-15% of the feed volume into the evaporator. This has a very positive effect on the disposal costs. In addition, vacuum distillation enables a very high recovery rate of the important resource water.

Industrial wastewater contains a wide variety of contaminants. These can include for example heavy metals from a metal-processing plant, fats and oils from parts cleaning or medicinally relevant substances or ingredients from the pharmaceutical industry - the wastewater is as diverse as the processes themselves. There is a plethora of different industrial wastewater treatment methods on the market - all with their specific strengths and weaknesses. Here is an overview of the most common processes: