In cold regions, businesses could assess natural freezing as a way to purify industrial wastewater using outdoor cold. In laboratory tests with ethanol and salt solutions, impurity levels in the ice were 47–86% lower than in the starting solutions. Ethanol produced weaker ice than salt, so the contaminant matters when planning how to break and collect the ice. The findings can inform harvesting design, but performance with real wastewater still needs testing.
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Miia John
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