Environmental Technologies and Eco-innovation in the Czech ...

Because the drinking water shall supply people with necessary nutrients, the
filtration procedures and water distillation are used only for a part of the water being
treated, e.g. for demineralised water production by MEGA a.s. for the boiling plants of
the Ostravar and Velké Březno breweries.
6.2 | Mine water and groundwater treatment
Inconsiderate interventions in landscape, extensive industrial production and a lack
of environmental education were some of the reasons that some types of waste water
were created (mostly in the old environmental burdens locations). After 1989, several
methods to eliminate pollution from these waste waters were developed, tested and in
the end successfully applied in the Czech Republic.
This special type waste water is contaminated groundwater that exists from
production activities at industrial sites, unsecured landfills and the water draining
or drawn from former mines. While mine water is usually polluted only with excessive
quantities of dissolved inorganic salts 3 (without shares of especially dangerous
pollutants), polluted groundwater mostly contains specific contaminants (heavy
metals, oil products, pesticides and herbicides both of organic and inorganic origin).
The specific type of pollution requires specific treatment technologies and specific
methods of pollution identification, the development of which is taking place in
the Czech Republic at the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Environmental
Protection at Brno University of Technology.
In the past, groundwater sanitation occurred either in situ (at the original place),
by repeated re-pumping with the contaminant’s displacement and collection (deaeration
4 ) or as contact filtration 5 connected with the regeneration of the filtration
material 6 . This is the manner by which the contaminated groundwater near civil and
all military airports was cleaned. Today, sanitation of this type of water is carried
out either by means of reverse osmosis or using the cleansing effects of the grown
microorganism monoculture. The mentioned technologies were patented abroad
but within the framework of international projects. Czech research institutes also
3 inorganic salts – substances dissolved in water that are of neither animal nor plant origin
4 de-aeration – a procedure where the solution is bubbled through with air, into which dissolved gasses gradually pass
5 contact filtration – filtration through material (e.g. activated carbon) that can absorb (bind on the surface) some substances
from the solution
6 regeneration of the filtration material – the removal of substances captured on filtration material, e.g. by thermal
processing, which enables its reuse