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| Jennyfer Díaz Angulo and José Antonio Lara Ramos, two of the members of the group that invented the reactor for wastewater treatment. Credit: Édgar Bejarano, Communications Office, Faculty of Engineering. |
On February 19, the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) approved an invention patent created by three researchers from the Universidad del Valle, during their Doctoral process in Chemical Engineering. As a result of spontaneous conversations in the classroom, this invention promises to become a tool that will contribute to improving the wastewater treatment systems existing so far in different industries in the country.
A conversation between doctoral students
In 2015, a group of students, gathered around their research seminars, began to share the questions derived from their experiments, unaware of the fruit that would come out of those talks, almost 10 years later. They were the Professor and researcher Fiderman Machuca-Martínez, among Jennyfer Díaz Angulo, Augusto Arce Sarria and José Antonio Lara Ramos, members of the Research Group on Advanced Processes for Biological and Chemical Treatments-GAOX, of the School of Chemical Engineering. Through dialogue, they formed what would become a common project, aimed at maximizing the advantages of each research they were conducting separately -such as photocatalysis, ozonation and homogeneous catalysis, all in the line of advanced oxidation processes-. The motto was clear: to create science and to integrate their knowledge and experience to offer an innovative solution for wastewater treatment.
"From those discussions we started thinking about how to create a reactor that would allow us to conceive the idea that the technologies we were applying could add up together, could be synergistic and could increase the potential of the treatment to be applied," recalls José Antonio Lara, PhD in Chemical Engineering and professor at the Universidad del Valle.
As part of his research process, he was the one who shared with his colleagues the difficulties he had encountered during his experimentation with ozonation processes. The problem, he told them, was that ozone was a very selective material when it came to attacking molecules present in the water, so that at the end of the process certain molecules persisted in the treated water. Jennyfer Díaz Angulo and her colleague Augusto Arce, experts in catalytic processes, recalled the reactive species of their experiments, among them the hydroxyl radical, and told their colleague that -unlike ozone- it is not selective, so it attacks all the molecules present in the water, although they pointed out that the photocatalysis process carried out by them was slower than the ozonation process. After finding such points in common, they decided to bet on a union of these processes: ozone would play a primary role, fighting all the molecules in the untreated water, and the hydroxyl radical would be a secondary one, focused on the smallest molecules still present in the water samples.
Based on this, they began to integrate their processes and conduct experiments to see if this union could work. They started with small water samples in the lab. Initially, they only worked with degradations of a single compound, such as caffeine or diclofenac. Sometimes even with a mixture of both. They also published scientific papers with their findings. They soon realized that the project required a test on a much larger scale, this time with real water. Then, during this experiment, they encountered setbacks and imperfections in the synergy of the processes, and they were forced to call on their engineering expertise to overcome these drawbacks.
"At that time, Professor Fiderman told us that we had to build a pilot prototype," says Jennyfer Díaz, PhD in Chemical Engineering and manager of innovation and technological development, and adds that for this new stage it was essential that a member of the group was skilled in the use of computer-assisted 3D modeling. With this facility, the modeling process went hand in hand with the ideas that came out of their discussions. The result was a multi-lamp reactor, in which up to five different wastewater treatment processes could be carried out.
After managing the necessary resources to purchase the components, the prototype was built in 2018. This gave them a free hand to knock on the doors of the private sector, in search of untreated water in which to conduct experiments. It was able to be tested on water from different industries, including food, textile and paper. Once built, they went from working with 1 or 2 liters of water to a minimum of 30 liters, and it was even used by undergraduate students of the Chemical Engineering program to carry out their undergraduate projects.
"That gave us reasons to say that the technology was useful and had a strong industrial application. That's when we applied for the patent," says Jennyfer Díaz, and clarifies that the work continued. Currently there is a treatment plant, capable of working at six cubic meters per hour, inside the Universidad del Valle.
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| Professor and researcher José José Antonio Lara explaining some of the functions in prototype built in 2018. Credit: Édgar Bejarano, Communications Office, Faculty of Engineering. |
Versatility of the invention: commercial and community uses
The invention of researchers Machuca-Martínez, Arce, Diaz and Lara is intended as a tertiary treatment for water that does not accomplish regulation 631 of the Ministry of the Environment, related to quality standards for wastewater. Although it depends on each company when this method is used, the researchers clarify that their invention does not replace existing systems for such treatments. It is a polishing system, designed to improve existing treatments. Thanks to the processes it can carry out, it offers a versatile range, very useful when it comes to treating the complexities of wastewater, which components are not the same for each case.
"All of us who work with (waste) water know how complicated it is to have a global method. It doesn't exist. The equipment we have aims to be an approach," explains researcher Díaz, adding that depending on the complexity of the water, the five available methods - photolysis, ozonation, photocatalysis, catalytic ozonation, and homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis - can be applied, or just one of them, which saves costs derived from the use of energy that may not be necessary.
José Antonio Lara notes that prototypes like this one are born to solve industry and community problems. He says that one of his desires behind the development of this technology was to solve the problem with the water that his community – the Zenú indigenous people, located in Turbaco, in the department of Bolívar - ingested in times of drought, because it contained waste from the animals in the area. "This was an idea that was also designed to disinfect the water," he says.
In 2020, when the group graduated from their doctoral studies, Jennyfer Díaz and José Antonio Lara created a company called Simulation and Process Laboratory, SIMPROLAB. Currently, this company is certified as a spin-off of the Universidad del Valle, which allows them to have a place to carry out the experiments with the prototype, inside a treatment plant. They are approaching a private company so that the prototype can be tested in their waters, which they hope will become a window for other companies to corroborate its usefulness.
The patent: a way to contribute to the country's develop
Motivated from the beginning by the mentorship of Professor Fiderman Machuca, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad del Valle, the interest of the GAOX Research Group has been the transmission of knowledge. Within the doctorate there is an interest in learning and understanding the mechanisms that make possible the processes derived from their research, as a way of giving back to the region and to the country -which encourages these studies with scholarships-, understanding that the development of internal technology is fundamental for the development of the country. This is what motivated the patent application, which was approved by the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) on February 19.
Despite already having three patents, for Jennyfer Díaz this patent means a different kind of joy. "It is special. Because it is born from a conversation, which I think is very important and I hope it is not lost. It was born in the postgraduate room, with different ideas and discussions. The discussion that is generated inside a postgraduate room, with people who are 100% dedicated to research, is like a seed."
If interested in being in touch with researchers or any further information about the invention patent, please write the Faculty of Engineering Communications Office: comunicaingenieria@correounivalle.edu.co
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