An approach to industrial water conservation – A case study involving two large manufacturing companies based in Australia

Abstract

Abstract:8 This study presents the application of an integrated water management strategy at two 9 large Australian manufacturing companies that are contrasting in terms of their respective 10 products. The integrated strategy, consisting of water audit, pinch analysis and membrane 11 process application, was deployed in series to systematically identify water conservation 12 opportunities. Initially, a water audit was deployed to completely characterize all water 13 streams found at each production site. This led to the development of a water balance 14 diagram which, together with water test results, served as a basis for subsequent enquiry. 15After the water audit, commercially available water pinch software was utilized to identify 16 possible water reuse opportunities, some of which were subsequently implemented on site.

An Empirical Research on Influence Factors of Industrial Water Use

“…The strict requirements of environmental protection could significantly increase water demand in the short term. With the improvement of wastewater reuse technology and graded utilization of reclaimed water however, the use of unconventional water sources replaces fresh water in the process of gas desulfurization and dust elimination, which will alleviate the demand for industrial fresh water [2,53], and the effects of environmental protection on industrial water demand will be no longer obvious in the long term. In the future, environmental awareness may be further enhanced and the requirements for industrial environmental protection may also be deepened and more comprehensive, therefore, it is urgent to adopt technical and non-technical measures to reasonably control the demand environmental protection for water resources.…”

“…Water plays a crucial role in different production processes. According to its function and purpose, industrial water use can be classified as production water use, cooling and thermal water use, and miscellaneous water use [1,2]. Compared to agriculture and domestic water use, water for industrial use is more complex, and it is more easily affected by changes in the external environment such as industrial development, production level upgrading, environmental protection requirements, and climate change [3][4][5][6][7].…”

Identifying water recycling strategy using multivariate statistical analysis for high-tech industries in Taiwan

“…In some cases, partial of the effluent streams can be reused after regeneration unit, depending on the assessment results from laboratory-scale trials for types of treatment process (e.g. membrane filtration or reverse osmosis) (Agana et al, 2013;Okazaki et al, 2000). Practically, ultra-filtration (UF), reverse osmosis (RO) and membrane bioreactor (MBR) are commonly applied for reclaimed water treatment.…”

The role of water auditing in achieving water conservation in the process industry

“…This included the identification of alternative water sources such as rainwater harvesting (the modelling of such alternative sources has recently been demonstrated by Nápoles-Rivera et al 2013), which could be stored on site within unconfined aquifers, and the potential for water cascading, where water is reused without treatment in processes with lower water quality requirements (Mann and Liu 1999). Various tools can be used to model such opportunities highlighted by water auditing, particularly where water quality monitoring has been included (an example of such integrated water management is detailed in Agana et al 2013).…”