The VALORIX project, led by ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL, is developing an environmentally sustainable and economically viable technology to improve landfill management.
VALORIX technology will allow ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL to recover magnesium and phosphate from landfill leachate and reduce the environmental impact associated with them.
CETIM collaborate in the project by coordinating the R&D laboratory-scale magnesium and phosphate recovery works. We also support the validation of the VALORIX technology and its technical, economic and environmental evaluation.
For years, the main method of managing industrial waste has been disposal in landfills, a type of facility that generates a residual stream -leachate- with a significant pollutant load and a high environmental impact. Nowadays, these streams are treated using concentration techniques that reduce the volume of the polluting stream. However, in order to take advantage of waste streams containing compounds of high interest and, following the challenges of the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL and CETIM promote research into new sources of obtaining and recovering critical raw materials (CRMs).
VALORIX: valorization of landfill leachate
Within the framework of this problem, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL launches the VALORIX project, whose objective is to research and validate a flexible system for the recovery and treatment of non-hazardous landfills leachate. These leachates contain significant amounts of magnesium and phosphate (CRMs), which can be extracted for later reuse. Therefore, the development of new technological processes, sustainable and with low associated costs, that allow these currents to be treated, recovering the valuable materials present in them and reducing, at the same time, their environmental impact, is crucial.
To carry out these studies, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL relies on the expertise of CETIM as a center specializing in circular economy and waste recovery. In this sense, CETIM has collaborated in the preliminary characterization studies of the composition of the leachate and in the definition of the technical requirements of the technology, as well as in the development of laboratory-scale tests for the recovery of valuable resources and the obtaining of water qualities that allow the discharge conditions to be met. Based on laboratory results, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL, in collaboration with CETIM, is currently developing the VALORIX technology pilot plant.
Successful results achieved
Through combinations of electrochemical technologies with adsorption processes, among others, successful laboratory results have been achieved in the recovery of magnesium and phosphate, as well as in the reduction of the pollutant load of leachate.
Soon, during 2022 and 2023, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL will build and validate the VALORIX pilot plant, under real conditions and with the plant operating continuously.
Thus, with the execution of VALORIX, ACTTIA MEDIOAMBIENTAL will have an innovative environmentally sustainable and economically more competitive technology, which will increase the sustainability and profitability of landfills, by extracting high value-added products, which are currently not recovered, as well as reducing the costs associated with their treatment and their environmental impact.