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

Abstract

22Water has traditionally been over utilised within the process industry due to its low cost. However, 23 increasing environmental regulations, concerns around human and ecological health, and consumer 24 expectations of high environmental performance have placed water conservation onto the agenda of 25 the process industry. Many conceptual and mathematical techniques are available for determining 26 appropriate water management practices to achieve this, but these are often not easily applied in 27 complex, multi-contaminant systems such as petroleum refineries. 28This study investigated the use of water auditing techniques to examine water flows within a 29 petroleum refinery, concurrently identifying practical ways for achieving water conservation. The 30 work demonstrated that, even in a refinery with processes considered highly efficient within the 31 industry, many opportunities existed to improve water conservation through technical, cultural and 32 behavioural adaptations. These included the use of alternate water sources such as rainwater runoff, 33 reuse of water within process units, and the introduction of an overarching company policy to 34 minimise water use and effluent discharge. Water auditing was shown to be a simple yet effective 35 method for exposing water management procedures which could be adopted for continual 36 improvement, contributing to the emerging ideal practice of zero liquid discharge. 37 38

A systems approach for assessing water conservation potential through demand-based water tariffs

“…Moreover, the analysis of the outcomes of the undertaken social survey helped in identifying thresholds of feasible IBT scenarios, while retracting tariff options which received a negative feedback. The inclusion of social aspects in this modelling exercise is deemed crucial, since raising awareness to achieve behavioural changes is as important as technical design and calculations when aiming at water conservation and minimisation (Barrington et al, 2013). It is important to highlight how this study focuses solely on water delivered by the water utility to the households.…”

The emerging role of water footprint in supply chain management: A critical literature synthesis and a hierarchical decision-making framework

“…Likewise, sourcing from suppliers located in regions where local water scarcity is low (Huang et al, 2014), as well as changing the composition of the final food commodities aiming to contain water-friendly raw materials (Jeswani et al, 2015), could further reduce the total product WF. As regards internal industrial operations, the establishment of internal WF auditing (Ene et al, 2013) and control (Tsolakis et al, 2014) systems is necessitated in order to identify processes generating water losses and define methods for wastewater reduction (Barrington et al, 2013). It is also suggested that manufacturers should invest in water-efficient technologies that consume lower volumes of freshwater during processing (McKinsey and Company, 2009).…”

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

“…1) was implemented to all the participating plants in this study (Barrington et al, 2013). Water balance charts were distributed and collected for all the participating plants.…”

“…In the process system, it may be possible to cascade reuse wash or rinse water through processes with various water quality requirement, as the effluent becomes cleaner as it progresses downstream (Eble and Feathers, 1992). This step involves a thoughtful analysis of water quality requirements for each process, as well as the actual effluent water quality at each step (Barrington et al, 2013). 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.…”