ARBOK-Arsenic

Overview

Groundwater is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth — about 650 billion tons (more than 170 trillion gallons) extracted every year, half of it to agriculture, one third to domestic supply, the rest to industry. In dozens of countries it has become a source of chronic poisoning. 700 million people — about 12% of the world's population, every 8th person on Earth — drink arsenic-contaminated water daily. The WHO limit is 0.01 mg/L (10 µg/L); real wells run 10 to 100 times higher, reaching 100 and even 1,000 µg/L, which is the concentration used in agriculture to kill rodents.

The global program exists — UN, UNICEF, WHO, UNOPS, UNEP, the World Bank and the European Commission fund it with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, tens of billions over two decades — but the wording is "risk mitigation", not problem solving, and the result is effectively zero. Arsenic is not removed from groundwater: reverse osmosis pushes it into toxic brine that is dumped back into the environment and returns to the glass more concentrated.

Arbok-Arsenic breaks that dead-end with cold vacuum evaporation: no membranes, no cartridges, no chemicals, no brine — only WHO-standard drinking water with a clean alpine taste and a dry solid residue in which the arsenic itself becomes a marketable industrial product.

Applications

• Primary use case: removal of arsenic from well and groundwater for drinking supply — placed directly on the well.
• Also removed: lead, mercury, oil residues, sewage traces, salts, organics, lignin, and radioactivity.
• Users and scale: villages of 2,000 people (50 t/day module), towns and regional clusters or four villages at once (200 t/day industrial unit); rural wells across Europe; UN/UNICEF-funded national arsenic programs.
• Secondary output: WHO-compliant water can be bottled on site in 0.5–6 L formats immediately, without remineralization or post-treatment; dry arsenic residue sold for industrial use (electronics, glass, chemicals).
• Geography of the problem addressed: USA (~2.1 million people above the limit — New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, California); Europe (France — Brittany, Aquitaine; Germany — Saxony, Bavaria; Hungary, Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Scandinavia, mostly rural wells); Russia and Central Asia (Trans-Baikal, Altai, Ural, Kazakhstan); China (Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang); India and Bangladesh (the largest cluster in the world, where millions of wells drilled as a "safe alternative" to surface water became one of the worst water catastrophes of the 20th century); Latin America (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru — Altiplano-Puna plateau, 10–20x above limits, and in Chile's Atacama overlapping with lithium mining); Africa (South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania — mine water and natural aquifers); Australia (central and western regions).

Operating Principle

Cold vacuum evaporation. Water vapor (<30 nm) is separated from the stream; the solids — arsenic, salts, organics, lignin — remain and fall out as a dry residue. There is no membrane, no cartridge, no reagent; the only input is electricity. Because the separation is by vapor phase rather than by rejection at a membrane, there is no brine: the entire contaminant load ends up in a dry, extractable solid rather than in a liquid concentrate. The product water meets WHO standards and has an alpine taste, ready for bottling without artificial remineralization.

Why arsenic is in the water in the first place: when groundwater passes through rocks containing organic matter (lignin, humus, brown coal), microbial decomposition creates an anaerobic environment — oxygen drops, reducing agents such as Fe²⁺ rise. Iron and manganese oxides, to which arsenic is bound in minerals, dissolve; the arsenic detaches and converts into the mobile forms arsenite (As³⁺) and arsenate (As⁵⁺). Lignin and organic residues do not contain arsenic themselves — they create the conditions for it to migrate into groundwater, which is why areas rich in lignin, coal layers and organic sediments show the highest concentrations.

Constraints noted in the source: the unit needs electricity as its sole input, and in cold regions it works outdoors or under a light shelter. Two staff members are required for operation. The comparison table describes removal as "complete removal"; a numeric residual arsenic concentration in the product water is not given — [требует уточнения из базы].

Key Parameters

| Parameter | Value |

|---|---|

| Method | Cold vacuum evaporation; water vapor <30 nm separated, solids remain as dry residue |

| Capacity, industrial unit | 200 tons (m³) per day (~53,000 gallons/day) |

| Capacity, village module | 50 tons/day |

| People served, 200 t/day | 100,000 at 2 L/day; 66,000 at 3 L/day |

| People served, 50 t/day | A village of 2,000 people (demand 50 t/day, 13,200 gal/day) |

| Energy | 0.7 kWh per metric ton of water |

| Energy, 200 t/day unit | ~140 kWh/day (~5.8 kW continuous load) |

| Energy, 50 t/day module | ~35 kWh/day |

| Reference — RO energy use | 3–6 kWh/m³ |

| Footprint | 20-ft vertical container, 110–160 ft² (10–15 m²); can be placed directly on the well |

| Staff | 2 operators |

| Consumables | None — no membranes, no cartridges, no chemicals; electricity only |

| Liquid waste | None — no brine; dry solid residue only |

| Reference — RO brine | 50–70% of feed water, toxic |

| Product water | WHO-compliant, alpine taste, bottleable on site in 0.5–6 L formats without remineralization |

| Siting | Outdoors, or under a light shelter in cold regions |

| Residual arsenic in product water | [требует уточнения из базы] |

| Service life, capex | [требует уточнения из базы] |

Architecture and Components

Vertical cold vacuum evaporation unit housed in a 20-ft container, occupying 110–160 ft² (10–15 m²), sited directly on the wellhead. Modular by capacity: the 200 t/day industrial unit and a 50 t/day module at one quarter of standard power, cheaper and more compact. Dry residue is removed as an extractable solid. Optional on-site bottling line for 0.5–6 L formats. Internal train and stage-level component breakdown: [требует уточнения из базы].

Advantages

Comparative analysis from the source:

| Parameter | Filters | Reverse Osmosis (RO) | Arbok-Arsenic |

|---|---|---|---|

| Removal efficiency | Partial | High, unstable with brine | Complete removal |

| Output water | Inconsistent | Needs remineralization | WHO-compliant |

| Waste | Spent cartridges | Toxic brine (50–70%) | Dry residue, usable |

| Energy use | None | 3–6 kWh/m³ | 0.7 kWh/ton |

| Consumables | High | High | None |

| Maintenance | Frequent | Costly, fragile | Minimal (2 staff) |

| Scalability | Household | Limited by brine | 50–200 t/day modules |

| Economics | Low | High CAPEX/OPEX | Low cost, short payback |

• Technical: removes not only arsenic but lead, mercury, oil residues, sewage traces and radioactivity; no fragile membranes; unlike RO it does not require a backup diesel or gas generator at every installation.
• Waste: no toxic liquid concentrate at all — the poison leaves as a dry solid instead of returning to the aquifer.
• Economic: replaces trucking logistics costing hundreds of thousands per year per village; payback in a few years.
• Byproduct: arsenic is collected dry and sold for industrial use in electronics, glass and chemicals — the poison becomes a market product.

Integrations

Applies the platform separation train of ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) to well water; sits alongside groundwater and drinking-water cases ARBOK-Underground-Water, ARBOK PURI, ARBOK-Lead-Water. On-site bottling of the product water links to ARBOK-BOTTLING. The dry residue and salt fraction connect to ARBOK-CRYSTALLIZER.

Deployment & Operation

The unit is placed directly on the well, on open ground or under a light shelter in frost-prone regions, and needs only an electricity supply — no membranes, cartridges or chemicals to procure, and no consumable logistics chain into rural areas. Two operators run it. Capacity is chosen by settlement size: 50 t/day for a village of 2,000, 200 t/day for a town or for four villages served from one unit. Product water can go straight to bottling in 0.5–6 L formats. Commissioning timeline and installation works: [требует уточнения из базы].

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

TRL 9 — проставлен Михаилом 2026-08-06.

TRL number is not stated in the source — . The source presents Arbok-Arsenic as an existing, deployable system with defined unit capacities, footprint, staffing and energy figures, and calls for global deployment; it does not cite a named operating installation.

Market Potential

700 million people (~12% of the world's population) drink arsenic-contaminated water. In high-arsenic regions life expectancy is 5–10% lower than in nearby safe areas and overall mortality is 30–70% higher — tens of millions of premature deaths and over 100 million life-years lost every year. Documented health outcomes: cancers of the skin (palms, soles), bladder, lung and liver; hypertension, ischemic heart disease and strokes; type II diabetes and thyroid disorders; memory loss, cognitive decline and depression; pigmentation changes, keratosis, hair and tooth loss.

Funding already exists and is being spent without result: UN, UNICEF, WHO, UNOPS, UNEP, the World Bank and the European Commission allocate hundreds of millions of dollars annually — tens of billions over two decades — under a "risk mitigation" mandate. The addressable market is therefore the redirection of existing program budgets plus the avoided cost of trucking and RO operation. Hungary alone delivers water daily by truck to hundreds of villages.

Typical Project Economics

• Trucked water: 15–20 €/t ($16–21/ton) → $300–400k per year in logistics alone (RU source: 275,000–365,000 € per year).
• A 50 t/day Arbok-Arsenic module covers the demand fully, consuming ~35 kWh/day.
• Savings: hundreds of thousands per year. Payback: a few years.
• A 200 t/day unit is four times more powerful, covers a town or a regional cluster, and operates at even better efficiency.
• Additional revenue line: dry arsenic sold for industrial use.

> Расхождение в источнике: годовые расходы на подвоз воды для деревни на 2,000 человек указаны в английской версии как $300–400k/год, в русской — как 275,000–365,000 €/год. Обе цифры приведены как есть.

Risk Factors

• No numeric residual-arsenic figure for the product water is given in the source — only the qualitative "complete removal"; certification against the WHO 0.01 mg/L limit needs documented test data.
• Dry residue is a concentrated arsenic-bearing solid: its handling, storage and sale as an industrial product require a qualified offtake channel; without one it is hazardous waste.
• Electricity is the sole input, so supply reliability at rural sites is the single point of dependence (the source notes RO's need for backup generators as a defect, but any electrically driven unit shares grid exposure).
• Two trained operators must be available per installation — a staffing constraint in remote rural deployment.
• Cold regions require a light shelter over the unit.
• Institutional risk: the incumbent programs are structured around "risk mitigation" — filters, RO and trucking — and hundreds of millions per year already flow through those channels.
• No named operating reference installation is cited in the source.

Related Technologies

ARBOK-Underground-Water · ARBOK PURI · ARBOK-Lead-Water · ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) · ARBOK-BOTTLING · ARBOK-CRYSTALLIZER