Technologies designed with the impact in mind.
Transitioning to a Circular Economy is a crucial next step if we’re to create a sustainable future for our planet. Companies, traditionally driven by a Linear Economy and seen as significant negative contributors to people and planet, are now playing a pivotal role in a environmental stewardship. Recognising the impact of their operations, these companies are making concerted efforts to integrate sustainable technologies into their processes.
Virotec's technologies are driving the shift for these organisations and creating a powerful opportunity for change, by transforming the world’s large-scale industrial waste streams into products that provide solutions for the world’s most intractable problems.
The Problem
Aluminium is the fastest-growing mass-produced material group, a prerequisite for lightweight design of vehicles, food containers and storage, as well as civil-engineering structures. Red mud is the waste of bauxite refinement into alumina and with about 180 million tonnes produced per year, red mud has amassed to one of the largest hazardous waste products, with the staggering amount of 4 billion tonnes accumulated on a global scale.
With a investment to date of over $30 million on research and development, over 30 years of rigorous peer testing and unparalleled legislative approvals, Virotec’s patented Basecon™ 2.0 and Bauxsol™ Technologies are the answer to this very real global problem.
Basecon 2.0 Technology
Basecon 2.0 Technology process transforms the high alkaline (ph13-14) red mud and hazardous Alumina refinery waste both physically and chemically into Virotec’s Bauxsol technology raw material.
This process does not neutralise the red mud, because the alkalinity is uniquely not destroyed, rather it transforms the material into a new product that has particular benefits for the neutralisation of acid and the removal of heavy metals and other compounds. Therefore, the Basecon 2.0 process is a chemically engineered manufacturing process producing Bauxsol.
Bauxsol Technology
With over 150 blends and processes the Bauxsol Technology is safe whilst being chemically and ecologically benign.
Bauxsol eliminates acidity and binds up to 99.99% of trace metals. It also successfully removes mercury, arsenic, phosphates, radionuclides and many other contaminates and has been rigorously peer reviewed, awarded global approvals and considered a mature technology by industry and regulators.
“I know of no other practical and economic technology in the world today that could achieve such conclusive and wide-ranging results...”
Mr Ken Wangerud, Remediation Project Manager, Superfund Remedial Program, US EPA