Get-A-Met: Groundbreaking Extraction technology for critical Metals and Metalloids from industrial wastewaters

Its parent MaRes program aims at creating and demonstrating an operational, flexible toolbox combining pyro-, hydro-, electro, bio-, solvo- and ionometallurgical technologies to recover metals and to valorize the residual matrix.

The new technology developed within the Get-A-Met project will be applied for the recovery of critical raw materials (CRM) from diluted water streams.

Various industrial activities cause CRM emissions in wastewater: chemical industry, ore processing, metallurgical industry, surface treatment of metals, specialty glass productions and email sector.

Actually no technologies exist to recover CRM from such matrices at affordable economics. Capacitive electroprecipitation, the core technology that will be developed in Get-A-Met, will increase the amount of CRM recovered and will decrease the amount of CRM lost by diffuse emissions or by waste sludge disposal.

Capacitive electroprecipitation will be combined with advanced speciation knowledge, pre-treatment with membrane electrolysis to tune the streams into the right specifications, and innovative carbon ion-imprinted materials to add on selectivity.