Recently, I formed a partnership with a very progressive university to develop a new type of filtration media with the expressed purpose of removing toxic, hazardous metals from industrial and even drinking water solutions. For those non-technical folks, toxic metals include things like lead, chromium, nickel, and Arsenic. Non-toxic metals of course are things like sodium and calcium.
In general, traditional and currently available filtration media is not a very prominent technology for the removal of metals. It is very effective however, at removing chlorine compounds and organic material like algae, fungi, oils, greases, etc. Various filtration media are used by municipalities, industrial water treaters, environmental clean-up specialists and even home water filtration products.
The majority organic removal filtration media used today comes from the burning down of either coconut shells or clam shells. Not only is this process energy intense (the heat needed to make ashes out of these materials is great), but the process also consumes a lot of water for rinsing, and chemicals to “activate” the carbon.
An interesting fact in all of this is that for the past 30 -40 years, there have not been any real significant advances in water-treatment technology. Oh, I imagine if you talked to some corporate stuffed shirt, they would brag on their state-of-the-art technology, but trust me, all the stuff on the market today is mostly slick, repackaged old technology with modern digital controls. The actual filtration media, membranes and machines have not really changed.
Enter, Media “901X”. This will be the most revolutionary media introduced to the water-treatment marketplace in decades. Not only has this product shown amazing ability to remove toxic metals, but it is the most sustainable, environmentally friendly filtration media ever produced.
Traditional Carbon media requires massive amounts of energy to burn the shells into carbon ash. Ion exchange resin requires head, chemicals and carbon chains. Our source material however, a totally natural material that is currently being sent to land fills, will actually fuel itself. Yes, you read that correctly! “901 X” is its own source of manufacturing fuel. How cool is that?
The only energy required in our process is a small amount to get the base process chain reaction started. We use less than 1/1000 the the energy typically used to make traditional filtration media. Delighting our planet even more, we do not have to use any additional treatment to activate our product. So far, the capacity to remove toxic metals has been astounding. And get a load of this! Much of the heat generated by our processes chain reaction can be captured and then converted back into usable energy. Boom!
It is important to note that the current and traditional removal of toxic metals from industrial process water is very expensive, and requires a lot of water, transportation and chemical costs. “901X” will soon change all of that and will provide great savings, sustainability and process improvements to many industrial processes.
Stay tuned as more of the cat comes out of the bag!