Reuse of appropriately treated industrial or municipal wastewater can reduce your manufacturing costs.
Water Reuse
Reuse reduces manufacturing costs
Reuse of appropriately treated industrial or municipal wastewater can reduce your manufacturing costs through:
- Lower process water and wastewater treatment costs
- Reduced water and chemical consumption
- Reduced wastewater production and impact on the environment
- Tailoring the treatment qualities to suit your different needs
- Recovery of heat and valuable waste products
- Preventing shut down during droughts
- Expanding production without increasing the sites freshwater consumption
- Attracting financial incentives through tax reduction or grants for environmentally beneficial solutions
- Complying with environmental legislation or planning permits
- Demonstrating sustainability benefits in your environmental annual report
- Taking advantage of a wealth of long term experience on similar projects
Water reuse, recycling and water reclamation are terms that are widely used in different parts of the world for the beneficial use of appropriately treated wastewater.
Water is often perceived as a low cost and limitless resource but it can be one of the most expensive raw materials in some manufacturing industries if you consider all the cost of processing the water on site.
How much does your water costs you for purchase, pump, heat, treat, store as well as maintenance, labour, capital depreciation, wastewater disposal and sludge management? [www.envirowise.gov.uk]
- Potable cost .......................................... 1 unit of currency
- Softened or demineralised water .......... 2 - 3 units of currency
- Steam............................................ 10 - 12 units of currency
- Condensate....................................... 2 - 4 units of currency
- Wastewater and sludge ....................... 2 - 4 units of currency
Wastewater a valuable water resource
The wastewater could be a valuable water resource readily available on site to reduce your costs.
If you need larger quantities then treated municipal wastewater can be a more attractive source of process water than surface water as municipal wastewater tends to be less variable in quality, is always warm and drought proof. There are multiple good practice examples of this application in the power, refining, pulp & paper, and microelectronics industries.
On many industrial sites, zero liquid discharge (ZLD) is justified by cost benefit analysis. Such systems have been operating in the pulp & paper, power and metal industries for years.
The applications range from 500 m3/day to 50,000 m3/day and we have approximately 90 industrial and municipal systems installed with nearly 30 ZLD systems.