Environment: evaporative concentration at our Isigny-le-Buat factory

To help minimize our environmental impact, the water used for certain specific rinsing operations in electrolytic coating at our Isigny-le-Buat factory in La Manche (Normandy) is post-treated in an evaporative concentrator. How does evaporative concentration work? How does this water treatment process help us respect the environment? Electropoli, a company specializing in surface treatment for the automotive, aerospace, and weaponry sectors, explains it all to you!

Surface treatment: why use evaporative concentration?

Surface treatment by electrolytic or chemical coating as performed at ELECTROPOLI uses water, notably during the substrate rinsing phases. The water leaving these rinsing phases is “polluted” by metal particles or chemical residues. That's why Electropoli post-treats all its rinsing water, which in certain specific cases is via an evaporative concentrator.

Main principles of evaporative concentration

The evaporative concentrator evaporates the rinsing water so that clean water vapour is separated from the residues, which we call the concentrate (mostly a mixture of metals and process chemicals). This concentrate is then taken to an accredited waste processing plant where it is depolluted, recycled, or destroyed. As for the clean water vapour, once it has condensed back to a liquid it can be reinjected into our treatment lines.

Evaporative concentration helps limit pollution and the consumption of water.

Evaporative concentration is therefore a means of decoupling pollutant flow from the clean water cycle, thus enabling better use of this natural resource. Aftar evaporative concentration, the treated, depolluted water is directly reused in our factory in a near self-sustaining loop, thus reducing our requirement for fresh water from the supply mains.