From FRANKFURT (Germany) – Water is essential in industry, whether it is used for cooling, as a solvent or as a transport medium. But this natural resource costs money, sometimes up to 400,000 euros per year.
Driven by economics, a growing number of industrial producers have started to adopt a more sustainable approach and implement water management solutions.
Last June’s Achema trade fair in Germany was the occasion for many companies to showcase their newest technologies aimed at making water processes more efficient and at saving costs.
For the German company Endress+Hauser, controlling water cycles requires collecting accurately the right information. The company has thus designed a range of instrumentation to better measure flow, density and turbidity in order to monitor clean water processes.
Water recycling is another major trend, with companies like Festo entering the field. The automation leader provides an automation loop that permits the treatment of wastewater within the production process itself. According to Festo, the system allows nearly 100% of the water employed in the process to be reused.
Reaching such a recycling level is an important achievement, but some want to go even further by totally eliminating water discharge. The idea is simple: the process should generate only solid waste. According to Veolia and GEA, this zero-liquid-discharge technology could be the model of the future.
