Chemical manufacturing water efficiency

Although mains water is needed for some processes at your site, you can use lower-quality water for some applications such as cleaning, toilet flushing and wet air pollution control. Alternative water sources include:

• Captured rainwater for cleaning, toilet flushing, etc.
• Borehole and other abstracted waters (for example from a canal or river) for cleaning, boiler feed water, etc. You should meter your supplies to ensure you comply with your abstraction authorisations (if you need one) and to monitor use - don't use more water than necessary just because it is cheaper.
• Conditioning and softening water using a physical method (eg magnetic treatment) rather than ion exchange to eliminate brine waste.
• Wash waters, cooling water and condensate for lower-grade cleaning.

Consider simple local treatment such as settlement or filtration, to allow reuse, but make sure that using low-cost supplies does not increase overall waste and effluent generation. Remember that discharge costs are generally higher than supply costs.