Waste streams contaminated with heavy metals are increasingly difficult and costly to discharge. Conventional treatment of metal-containing wastewaters is normally accomplished with physical-chemical methods. These processes generally consume costly chemicals and produce a sludge that is voluminous, difficult to handle & expensive to dispose of.

Paques offers you a new biotechnological removal technology: BIOMETEQ™. BIOMETEQ™ removes dissolved metals from up to 300 ppm down to ppb level, with little use of chemicals and virtually zero sludge production. Current popular applications include removal of Selenium from industrial effluents (power generation, metal processing). 

BIOMETEQ™ technology is based on a self-cleaning sand filter with naturally bacteria that cause common heavy metals such as Iron, Copper, Nickel, Zinc, Lead, Cadmium and Mercury to precipitate as metal sulphides. Metal (loid)s like Selenium, Molybdenum, Chromium and Uranium are precipitated into elemental form (selenium) or as metal (hydr)oxides (Table 1).

BIOMETEQ™ makes use of specialized, naturally occurring bacteria. These bacteria reduce sulphate to sulphide, which is then used for metal sulphide precipitation in the filter. Dissolved Se(IV/VI), Mo(VI), Cr(VI) and U(VI) are reduced by the same class of bacteria to Se(0), Mo(IV), Cr(IV) and U(IV) which are insoluble.