Water Minimisation

Until recently, the efficient use of water has been a low priority for most industries. Water has been cheap and readily available, effluent standards have been easy to meet and external agencies have been easy to satisfy. Today things have changed and will continue to change. Environmental standards are tightening, costs are rising, and processes are more intensive.

Is your site faced with:

	Expenditure for water treatment facilities?
	Tougher effluent regulations?
	Production bottlenecks due to insufficient water?
	Rising fresh water costs and water treatment costs?

If so, our water system management service can help. Over the last few years our technology has routinely achieved significant water flow and contaminant load reductions resulting in both operating and capital cost savings.

Our proven WaterPinch™ technology leads to better design of process water networks and effluent treatment strategies. This allows you to save fresh water, reduce effluent treatment and disposal costs, minimise capital investment and, in some cases, increase yield and debottleneck the process.

How does it work?

Before our engineers can set about improving the use of water, we must first establish how much you are currently using and where. In gathering the data for a water audit, it is common to run into the following problems:

	There are only a few reliable meters on the water system
	The meter readings conflict with each other
	Large sections of the water system have no meters

For these reasons, Linnhoff March has developed a unique tool to derive material balances in a fast and accurate way, even in situations where initial data quality is poor. This means that the time spent obtaining additional measurements is reduced to a minimum.

Composite Curves showing target for water re-use click to enlarge

 
Once the base case balance has been established, our project team applies our WaterPinch techniques to select the best water re-use, recycling, regeneration and treatment options to achieve a step-change improvement in water system design and performance. While traditional approaches focus on the end-of-the-pipe (improved effluent treatment), our approach looks in detail within the processes to identify the best overall solution.

Project savings

Operating cost savings within industry sector click to enlarge

We have applied our techniques on a large number of different studies covering various types of industry. The overall cost savings that were achieved are summarised in the figure (right).

Looking in more detail at one example, Monsanto's site at Newport, UK was faced with new legislation which required a reduction in COD discharge of 90%. The conventional way to achieve this would be to install a new centralised effluent treatment plant but Linnhoff March's team of consultants identified an alternative solution including in-process modifications. These changes significantly reduced the size of the new effluent treatment facility as well as giving an immediate benefit in operating cost savings.

		Conventional Solution	Linnhoff March Solution
	Operating Cost Saving	None	US$ 1M per year
	Total Capital Cost	US$ 15M	US$ 3.5M

Other companies who have used Linnhoff March's water management services include:

	BASF		Exxon
	Bayer		Kurita Water Industries
	BP		Parenco
	Daicel		Sasol
	Degussa-Hüls		Shell
	EniChem		Unilever

Download "Practical Techniques and Methods to Develop an Efficient Water Management Strategy" download