Energy & Power

Brines, blowdown and digestate from battery plants, semiconductor fabs, data centres, power stations and agricultural biogas plants, taken to zero liquid discharge, with water, metals, salts and nutrients recovered.

What we're treating

The energy transition is creating new water problems. Battery and battery-materials plants produce brines carrying lithium and other metals; semiconductor fabs need ultrapure water and discharge concentrated rejects; data centres and power stations concentrate cooling-tower blowdown until it can no longer be discharged; and agricultural biogas plants are left with digestate and hydrogen sulphide to manage.

These are concentration and separation problems. We approach them with the same thermal and membrane line proven on chemical and automotive brines: mechanical vapour recompression (MVR) and low-temperature distillation take the stream to zero liquid discharge, returning the water for reuse and recovering metals and salts as solids. At agricultural biogas plants, digestate treatment recovers nutrients and clean water, sulphur is captured from the gas, and the biogas is upgraded to grid-quality biomethane.

Load pattern: Continuous, with concentration rising through cooling and process cycles
Binding limits: Chloride, sulphate, metals and ammonia; often an outright zero-discharge requirement
Hard case: Scaling and corrosion in the evaporator at high concentration factors
Opportunity: Water recovered as ultrapure, cooling or boiler make-up; metals, salts and nutrients recovered as products

Technologies applied in this sector

This is a growing sector for UTB, with 6 plants delivered to date. The technologies behind it are proven on our chemical, automotive and battery-materials references.

Vacuum distillation1 plant

Thermal concentration of brine and process water.

Zero liquid discharge (ZLD)1 plant

The stream closed out with no effluent leaving site.

pH adjustment1 plant

Neutralisation ahead of downstream treatment.