Since 1980, CIE (Compagnia Italiana Ecologia) has been operating as a Waste Water Plant project and manufacturing company for Metal finishing lines using water for cleaning, etching and coating all kinds of metals (CRS, HDG, EG, Aluminium and alloys).
More than 500 plants have been installed by CIE both in ITALY and in the rest of the world (West Europe, East Europe, ME, America and Australia).
CIE plants have been installed in all metal finishing sectors:
- Steel Maker
- Cold Forming
- Automotive
- Appliances
- Aluminium Extrusion
- Aluminium Cans
- Coil Coating
- Aluminium general lines.
In each of them, different treatments can be present (cleaning, pickling, etching, phosphating, chromating, passivating and so on).
CIE's R&D department has generated a lot of innovation and patented processes such as:
- Water Rinse Recycling on I.X resins;
- Patented processes for Alkaline and acid solutions recovery and reuse;
- Waste water treatment for recycling and reuse;
- Phosphating sludges detoxication;
- U.F. for cleaning solutions;
- R.O. for primary water;
- Super R.O. for recovery of waste water;
- Multi stage Evaporators to minimize energy consumption.
Thanks to its strong background, CIE was the first company able to install (in 1989) the first ZERO LIQUID DISCHARGE (ZLD) process onto an important Steel Maker. Since 1989, more than 50 ZLD plants have been installed onto Steel Maker, Automotive, Coil Coating, Appliance, Aluminium Extrusion and Aluminium Can lines.
The most recent process developed by CIE is PUR-ALL.
PUR-ALL is a fantastic process applied on Waste Water containing Fluorides (F), Sulphates (SO4), Al, Fe, and Zn coming from acidic pickling or etching treatments.
The most important fields where PUR-ALL can be applied are:
- Al Extrusion pretreatment (Etching + Cr or Cr Free);
- Al Coils pretreatment (cleaning, etching, treatment);
- Al cans pretreatment (cleaning, etching, treatment);
- Steel and Stainless Steel (pickling).
The main important characteristic of PUR-ALL is to treat this kind of water by eliminating over 98% of all pollutants through a combination of totally automatic chemical and physical processes and leaving water that is suitable for many kinds of destinations such as:
- For dumping as "irrigation quality water" (PUR-ALL);
- For a full reuse (ZLD) to the same process generating the pollution (PUR-ALL+);
- For a Zero Liquid Discharge process and Zero Thermal costs (PUR-ALL ZeroZero).
PUR-ALL represents a superlative innovation for Al Extrusion, Al Coil Coating and Al can lines where F and SO4 are largely used creating many problems in the final dumping.
The last CIE innovation is a revolutionary ZLD process where thermal energy is no longer used. This means that the main managing costs of ZLD (represented by thermal energy required for Evaporation) are eliminated.
The result of such technology is PUR-ALL ZeroZero: Zero Liquid Discharge with Zero Thermal Energy costs.
Such a fantastic result is ready to be applied and it is easy to predict that within the next 5 years more than 50% of new installations will be equipped with Zero Liquid Discharge at Zero Energy costs.