Industrial water treatment

Industrial Water Treatment can be classified into the following categories:

• Boiler water treatment
• Cooling water treatment
• Wastewater treatment

Water treatment is used to optimize most water-based industrial processes, such as: heating, cooling, processing, cleaning, and rinsing, so that operating costs and risks are reduced. Poor water treatment lets water interact with the surfaces of pipes and vessels which contain it. Steam boilers can scale up or corrode, and these deposits will mean more fuel is needed to heat the same amount of water. Cooling towers can also scale up and corrode, but left untreated, the warm, dirty water they can contain will encourage bacteria to grow, and Legionnaires' Disease can be the fatal consequence. Domestic water can become unsafe to drink if proper hygiene measures are neglected.

In many cases, effluent water from one process might be perfectly suitable for reuse in another process somewhere else on site. With the proper treatment, a significant proportion of industrial on-site wastewater might be reusable. This can save money in three ways: lower charges for lower water consumption, lower charges for the smaller volume of effluent water discharged and lower energy costs due to the recovery of heat in recycled wastewater.

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Industrial water treatment objectives

Industrial water treatment seeks to manage four main problem areas: scaling, corrosion, microbiological activity and disposal of residual wastewater. Boilers do not have many problems with microbes as the high temperatures prevents their growth.

Scaling occurs when the chemistry and temperature conditions are such that the dissolved mineral salts in the water are caused to precipitate and form solid crystalline deposits. These can be mobile, like a fine silt, or can build up in layers on the metal surfaces of the systems. Scale is a problem because it insulates and heat exchange becomes less efficient as the scale thickens, which wastes energy. Scale also narrows pipe widths and therefore increases the energy used in pumping the water through the pipes.

Corrosion occurs when the parent metal oxidises (as iron rusts, for example) and gradually the integrity of the plant equipment is compromised. The corrosion products can cause similar problems to scale, but corrosion can also lead to leaks, which in a pressurised system can lead to catastrophic failures.

Microbes can thrive in untreated cooling water, which is warm and sometimes full of organic nutrients, as wet cooling towers are very efficient air scrubbers. Dust, flies, grass, fungal spores and so on collect in the water and create a sort of "microbial soup" if not treated with biocides. Most outbreaks of the deadly Legionnaires' Disease have been traced to unmanaged cooling towers, and the UK has had stringent Health & Safety Guidelines concerning cooling tower operations for many years as have had governmental agencies in other countries.

Disposal of residual industrial wastewaters

Disposal of residual wastewaters^[1] from an industrial plant is a difficult and costly problem. Most petroleum refineries, chemical and petrochemical plants ^[2] have onsite facilities to treat their wastewaters so that the pollutant concentrations in the treated wastewater comply with the local and/or national regulations regarding disposal of wastewaters into community treatment plants or into rivers, lakes or oceans.

See also

• Water treatment
• Wastewater
• Wastewater quality indicators
• Cooling tower
• Sewage treatment
• Fouling

Further reading

1. ^ Tchobanoglous, G., Burton, F.L., and Stensel, H.D. (2003). Wastewater Engineering (Treatment Disposal Reuse) / Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 4th Edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company. ISBN 0-07-041878-0. 
2. ^ Beychok, Milton R. (1967). Aqueous Wastes from Petroleum and Petrochemical Plants, 1st Edition, John Wiley & Sons. LCCN 67019834.