Magpie Polymers has an innovative and patented filtration technology for the selective removal of transition metals from industrial waste or process water. Its technology gives a high-performance and simple to apply solution to the increasing problem of metals in water. It is best suited for toxic metal removal and recovery of precious metal. The company, a spin-off from the French Institute Ecole Polytechnique, produces different patented polymers to capture a large number of metals including cobalt, cadmium, gold or even uranium, leaving less than a mg/m3 of metal in water. Magpie also recovers the captured metals, specifically the increasingly scarce and valuable metals.Magpie’s Polymers fix metals in a standard filtration process, using co-ordination chemistry. Selective bonds are formed between the metals and the polymer beads. This is very different from ion-exchange chemistry, commonly used in water treatment, giving Magpie, it says, “improved performance and improved selectivity:
- Low residual concentration (1 µg/l after filtration)
- Unequalled selectivity
- Efficient in hard and salty water
- Broad pH range (below 1 and up to 12).”
Magpie Polymers produces different types of filtration beads, sized between 0.5 and 1 mm. They are used in standard filtration columns identical to ion-exchange filtration systems. These filtration products can be purchased in easy to use evaluation kits, in 25 kg bags or in ready-to-use columns.