Jul 7 2011
Created by Union des Industries Chimiques (UIC – French Chemical Industries Association) and Fédération Française des sciences pour la Chimie (FFC – French Federation for Chemical Sciences) under the aegis of the French Ministry for Industry, the Pierre Potier prize rewards companies that bring out innovations in the field of sustainable development.
This year, Arkema has won the 2011 prize with an innovative process that uses hydrogen peroxide to eliminate sulfur residues from industrial effluents. The ultimate clean reagent, with water and oxygen as its only by-products, hydrogen peroxide has the advantage of generating neither sewage sludge nor toxic by-products.
Arkema places innovation at the heart of its development strategy, and invents solutions to meet the challenges of sustainable development. Since the turn of the century, Arkema has been developing the ecological applications of hydrogen peroxide. With its good reactivity and ease of application, hydrogen peroxide offers a cost-effective solution to eliminate certain pollutants. The solution rewarded this year, developed by Arkema at the CRRA (Centre de recherche Rhône Alpes, dedicated to energy management and eco-efficient processes), entails the desulfurization (elimination of sulfur compounds) of industrial effluent and urban wastewater.
The refining, petrochemicals, agro-food and urban water treatment sectors generate liquid and gas effluents that contain sulfur compounds (hydrogen sulfide, sulfide, mercaptans, etc.), which build up in water treatment plants, and so produce foul odors for both personnel and local people, generate equipment corrosion problems, and impair biological purification operations.
Accordingly, the innovation consists in using hydrogen peroxide – via an instantaneous oxidation reaction – to effectively eliminate these sulfur compounds, with the added benefit of generating neither sewage sludge nor toxic by-products; this marks this process out from others that can also be much less effective and highly energy-intensive. With this hydrogen peroxide treatment, the sulfur compounds reduction rate exceeds 90%, making the liquid waste suitable for biological treatment and the gas emissions compliant with regulations. Easy to use and cost-competitive, hydrogen peroxide requires no modifications to existing plant and equipment.
This solution is perfectly in line with Arkema’s process expertise, as well as the topics supported by the Axelera Chemistry-Environment competitiveness cluster, of which Arkema is a founding member, which aims to develop new processes with a low environmental impact.