Abstract: The present invention is for processing fluids, especially waste streams from nuclear power plants, and other fluid media that may be carrying valuable or useful substances, in order to collect the substances. The system uses sequential filtering and multiple passes to concentrate the substances, which allows the system to collect virtually all of the substances of interest to the user while reducing the volume of both the unwanted materials as well as the desired materials desired without affecting the purity of the fluid after processing. Additionally, the collected substances can be processed in-place, and without requiring any thermal processing prior to disposal of unwanted substances, or for the recovery and/or reuse of valuable substances.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for processing waste streams wherein a slipstream is formed on the upstream side of an ultrafiltration membrane (120) to carry collected and concentrated filter reject to a microfilter (170) via a slipstream through a conduit (155) at a very low flux through the microfilter. The low flux gives the particles in this stream a chance to interact and thus form an irregular matrix that itself helps to trap particles. The effluent from this matrix and microfilter is returned upstream of the ultrafiltration membrane via a conduit (165) to be repeatedly collected and concentrated. The suspended solids removed from the reject stream and microfilter may then be disposed of directly without further processing. For metal ions, the removal efficiency of ultrafiltration membrane can be improved by injecting sulfide compounds or other compounds upstream of ultrafiltration membrane.