Technology that deals with effluents garners investment

Climate Change Capital Private Equity (CPE) has led an €8m (£7m) investment in Orège, a French company that has developed patented wastewater treatment technologies for complex effluents and sludge from process industries.

CPE contributed €6m of the €8m round, alongside Oraxys, a Luxembourg-based cleantech private equity firm.

Orège’s patented SOFHYS and patent pending SLG are wastewater treatments that are said to be capable of treating complex industrial effluents.

According to CPE, SOFHYS is a patented reactor combining an oxidation process using boron-doped diamond electrodes with hydrodynamic functionalities.

It is claimed to be able to treat all types of dissolved non-biodegradable pollutants, including hydrocarbons, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes), amines and organosulphur compounds. Biodegradability is achieved by breaking down long organic chains into smaller easily biodegradable chains.

SLG is a physico-chemical system able to separate physical phases, namely solid, liquid and gas at standard pressures and temperatures and can be used on different industrial sludge, sediments and colloidal wastewaters.

The SLG technology is reportedly able to de-water sludge by breaking colloids, so decreasing the volume of sludge to be disposed of by a factor of two to three. It is also said to be able to de-pollute toxic sludge such as those containing hydrocarbons or metals.

The SLG reactor has low energy consumption and reactants compared to traditional de-watering technologies. The resulting water from the treatment process can be reused for industrial purposes or released back into the environment.

1. A hydrodynamic function / turbulent drainage / contact surfaces 2. A bubbling and oxidation function (function HYS) 3. A radical cracking function (HYS function) 4. A function of solid / liquid phase and colloid / liquid separation (SOF function)
1. A hydrodynamic function / turbulent drainage / contact surfaces 2. A bubbling and oxidation function (function HYS) 3. A radical cracking function (HYS function) 4. A function of solid / liquid phase and colloid / liquid separation (SOF function)