Coldep is revolutionizing wastewater treatment thanks to... compressed air
After more than ten years of research, Coldep has developed an efficient water treatment system by injecting compressed air microbubbles into a vacuum column. Its concept is beginning to be adopted in the food industry, especially in aquaculture.
Precious sense of timing. While the water resource is the subject of all the attention, the solution developed by two French engineers comes at the right time. The innovation of their company, Coldep, consists in passing treated water through a vertical column of several meters, where micro bubbles of compressed air will be injected (a process called “airlift”). These fine bubbles allow the flow to be driven upward and to drain the gases, microparticles or other liquids that come to saturate the water during the industrial process. All these undesired substances rise to the surface and form a scum that can be recovered, while the treated water follows the opposite path.The entire process is carried out under vacuum, to improve its efficiency.
Performances at the rendezvous
The idea behind this project is also to change the approach to water treatment by focusing on small units adjacent to consumer sites, rather than on large wastewater treatment plants downstream. On its brochure, Coldep boasts exceptional results: energy consumption that is much lower than competing solutions (< 0.03kWh/m3 of treated water), a loss of water of less than 1% at the end of the operation, an absence of chemical products... for performance “five times better than current systems”, says the company.