Water desalination and wastewater valorization powered by solar energy

SOLARVAP®

SOLARVAP® is the most efficient zero liquid discharge system in the market, as wastewater is treated with concentration technologies powered by solar energy. SOLARVAP® provides huge environmental and economic benefits in the long term, which include:

Energy saving
Wastewater management and water reuse
Reduction of pollutants
Recovery and reuse of resources

Condorchem Envitech offer

SOLARVAP® is the most sustainable water desalination system as it uses the sun’s energy to provide power to desalination plants, thus avoiding any GHE emissions.

SOLARVAP® is also an integrated and modular Zero Liquid Discharge solution, as it produces demineralized water from saltwater, brines and wastewater.

SOLARVAP® is the combination of two different technologies:

Sun2Heat® is a turn-key solar solution to generate process heat for industrial applications that has been developed by Rioglass Solar.

Envidest® vacuum evaporators are developed by Condorchem Envitech and they can be customized to treat any type of hazardous wastewater generated in industrial processes.

SOLARVAP® is an advanced meeting of these two technologies, the most efficient solar thermal collectors and the most advanced evaporation technology.
The result is the first industrial desalination and wastewater treatment solution totally powered the sun’s energy to produce drinking quality water and zero waste discharge.

Applications

Sea water desalination and brines management.
Drying/replacement of brine evaporation ponds.
Effluent waste reduction by CSH evaporation.
Valuable resources recovery from wastewater, including minerals, salts, metals, acids, etc.

Examples of applications

Clean water production from sea desalination plants. Enhancing the RO system with a SOLARVAP® integrated system

RO systems can recover 40-45% of sea water containing a TDS of 35,000 mg/l. To obtain 1,000 liters of clean and desalinated water, 1,200 liters of wastewater are generated (TDS around 63,000 mg/l) and must be disposed of, usually by pumping it out into the sea again. The big environmental problem is that this salty water is denser than sea water and lays on the seabed, disturbing the balance of the environment.

The 1,200 liters of wastewater (TDS: 63,000mg/l) can, instead, be treated with SOLARVAP® system, which reduces the final waste to 80 kg of sea salt that can be used or sold and produces 1,120 liters of distilled water that can be added to the production of clean and desalted water.

The total recovery of drinking water will be around 96,5% and the final production of sea salt will be around 80kg (commercial product) to achieve Zero Liquid Discharge.

14,000 m² CSH using SOLARVAP® system produces more than 40,000 m³ of clean drinking water per year

Replacing evaporation ponds with SOLARVAP® evaporation

These are some of the main reasons why replacing an evaporation pond for a SOLARVAP® solution can be a smart idea:

Less than 25% of the area occupied by the evaporation pond is enough to install a large scale SOLARVAP® system. To put it in numbers, 1m2 of land using SOLARVAP® system evaporates the same amount of wastewater as 4m2 of evaporation pond.
Clean drinking water is recovered after the evaporation process.
As mentioned before, SOLARVAP® allows the recovery of valuable resources, which can generate huge cost savings in activities such as mining.
Independent from water or brine quality, salinity or pH.
Performance will be always better with SOLARVAP® compared than an evaporation pond, as external conditions do not have any affect on the process (high humidity, rain, low wind days…).
Modular solar and thermal system that allows wide scalability.