RATIONALIZING THE WATER-USE IN THE BATCH PROCESS INDUSTRY

Recent years have seen an increasing environmental awareness and a con siderable rise in fresh water costs and in effluent treatment and disp osal costs. The need to decrease the use of water in the process indus tries has favored the development of water use minimization methodolog ies. Wastewater minimization methodologies have been developed for con tinuous process plants in the last years. However, there is very littl e work reported on the systematic rationalization of the water use in the batch process industry due to the complexity involved. In this pap er a methodology is presented which identifies the in-plant water reus e opportunities, resulting in significant freshwater consumption reduc tions. The methodology is illustrated with a case study based on food industry.