Wastewater before and after treatment

China’s first home-grown industrial wastewater-cleaning system, which uses electron beam irradiation to dissolve wastewater, was recently approved by the country’s nuclear industry association, cctv.com reported.

Experts believe the technology has broken the bottleneck of wastewater dissolving, and if widely used, the technology will greatly improve the country’s ability to dispose of industrial wastewater.

The technology is also expected to lower the cost of wastewater purification and recycling, they added.

The system was developed by China’s largest nuclear power operator China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and Tsinghua University.

The approval was jointly announced on Nov. 21 by Tsinghua University and CGN Nuclear Technology Application Co., Ltd., the latter of which develops strategic industries in non-power nuclear technology applications.

The cleaning system was, for the first time, applied in industrial operation. On Nov. 21, CGN signed an agreement of cooperation with a company in Zhejiang on the disposal of printing and dyeing wastewater.

The technology will be widely used for the disposal of business wastewater, including printing and dyeing, papermaking, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, experts say.

“The technology costs five million yuan less than the previous technologies in a year,” said a person in charge of the country’s first electron beam pilot project for processing sewage technology in Jinhua, east China’s Zhejiang province.

The method won’t make the water radioactive or leave any radioactive residue, said an expert with Tsinghua University.