A flow of efficiency

 

Manufacturing accounts for 50% of the water consumption in Western Europe. Analysis of benchmarked data shows that industries ranging from paper mills, dairy, beverage, ceramic and electronics have opportunities to reduce their water consumption by up to 50%. 

 

To benefit from such opportunities, users must look at the mechanisms driving actions in the industrial water cycle and consider the internal and external drivers that are leading to reduced water consumption, including: cost, sustainability, political and legislative. Businesses can then evaluate the options available, such as system efficiencies, water reuse and recycling, and take steps towards enhanced efficiency.

 

The first step is to gain a thorough understanding of the overall water cycle, typically through a water and energy audit. Only by knowing how much water a plant uses, and where, can the industrial water cycle be truly optimised. This can identify a number of improvement opportunities such as discovering system losses that can account for 50% of potential savings.   

 

An element of this is to establish if your supply is tailored to the needs of the plant in terms of quality and quantity. Managing energy consumption is typically the biggest challenge facing any industrial facility, and a water treatment plant is no exception, so adapting water quality to suit your specific needs can generate considerable savings within your water cycle. Likewise, the recycle and reuse of water, where appropriate, not only helps improve efficiency and operational costs but reduces environmental impact. Today, innovations in water recycling technologies allow process water to be reclaimed and wastewater to be reused safely and sustainably.

 

Managing industrial water systems is a specialist area, so where do engineers and technicians begin?  Firstly, the overall water cycle must be considered; implementing changes in one area can have a substantial impact on another. One option is to consider an integrated solution that will combine a series of technologies to achieve the desired goals, such as optimising efficiency, reliability and sustainability. By having an experienced water management company create a credible water and energy balance, opportunities for saving money and optimising performance can be identified and a process improvement plan can be developed.

 

Another example of a cost-saving solution includes the installation of an anaerobic digestion system to recover biogas, which can be used to power a site’s boilers for generating steam or to generate electricity that can be sold back to the national grid. This enables the customer to cut their energy bill and generate an income while reducing their environmental footprint. The process can be highly effective as a means of releasing energy from effluent treatment – the processing of just 1t of COD has the potential to produce around 3500kWh of energy. 

 

Applying a new technology, or adapting existing systems can provide a number of benefits. The most energy-intensive component of an effluent treatment plant is aeration, accounting for 40 to 70% of the energy used. A solution from Ondeo IS called Greenbass continuously adjusts the airflow delivered to the biological sludge treatment stage, making savings in plant energy consumption.

 

There are also indirect benefits of an integrated solution. With an outsourced provider to manage complex industrial and waste water systems to optimise efficiency, customers find that they can make cost savings while benefitting from more time to concentrate on their core business. Through monitoring and reporting while striving for operational excellence, the solutions provider will continue to deliver solutions that bring on-going improvement.

 

Reducing energy needs and protecting water resources are major challenges currently facing all industries, but whatever the needs of the plant, solutions are available to achieve optimum efficiency of the industrial water cycle.