Drought-proofing industry with water reuse
Climate change and water scarcity have made water reuse a strategic imperative for industries ranging from food production to semiconductor manufacturing. Our experts, George Hsu and Lucy Pugh, explain how firms can successfully implement reuse across their industrial operations.
Water scarcity imposes immense strain on communities across the country—with nearly 30 million Americans living in areas of high local water stress. Yet, scarcity is not merely a problem for residential consumers.
While communities use substantial quantities of potable water, industrial uses—power generation, mining and manufacturing—constitute over half of all ground and surface withdrawals in the U.S. Even more water for industrial uses is obtained from municipal potable water sources. Together, these applications have a tremendous economic impact: on a national scale, a single day of water service disruption would lead to $22.5 billion in lost GDP.
To mitigate these risks, water-dependent industries have turned to water reuse. This approach already boasts a proven track record. And with a new generation of water-intensive factories, such as EV battery plants and semiconductors, it’s become more critical than ever.
Why reuse?
Water reuse carries an array of benefits—both direct and indirect—for industrial facilities. One of the most apparent is resilience.
With chip fabs coming online in highly arid regions, many manufacturers have increasingly turned to reuse. When considering the water demand for chipmaking, it’s easy to see why; a single semiconductor fab can match the water demand of 300,000 households. Moreover, around 40 percent of semiconductor facilities will be located in watersheds facing severe water stress by 2030. In response, reuse has become a key strategy, with the rate of reuse industry-wide between 40 to 70 percent of water used.
Drought resilience, however, is far from the only motivator for industrial reuse. Environmental protection and compliance have also become key concerns. Increasingly stringent effluent discharge requirements have prompted many industrial facilities to implement reuse to remain compliant. In some cases, jurisdictions even mandate reuse.
Cost also serves as a key driver for reuse. If only local, potable water is available, operators may see lower costs from sourcing reclaimed water with less intensive purification requirements.
One benefit of reuse is harder to quantify—but equally impactful. Reuse technologies can make industrial facilities better neighbors, limiting their local impacts on water supplies and ecosystems. Not only does this create goodwill, but it can also streamline the delivery of new facilities by assuaging local concerns.
The right use
Industrial water reuse has many potential applications within an industrial facility. Reuse water can be used for steam generation and cooling; sanitation and cleaning for food processing and electronics manufacturing; and can supply process water for use in a product or its manufacture. Many industrial facilities also deliver key social and economic functions, handle highly environmentally sensitive materials and wastes, or demand exceptional water quality for high-precision applications. To apply reuse in an industrial setting, then, requires both a bespoke and rigorous approach to meet unique facility requirements.
In cooling tower applications such as those used for power generation and data center cooling, reuse systems must account for the impact of the reuse water quality on the cooling tower chemistry and blowdown rate for each specific system. For semiconductor manufacturing, water needs to be treated to ultra-pure standards, requiring advanced treatment. Food manufacturing can prove particularly water intensive as well and must also cope with substantial quantities of nutrients and organic waste.
No matter the end use, facility operators need to first define the facility water balance and required water quality. Process manufacturing can use water differently throughout numerous stages. It’s therefore essential to identify the most significant water-using processes to plan the right treatment approach.
Quality is equally critical as quantity. An individual facility can have numerous water uses ranging from drinking, fire suppression, utilities, cleaning, or raw material preparation. Each use will demand a different intensity of purification.
In some cases, elements of reuse may already exist at a candidate facility. Certain facilities have pre-treatment processes already in place, and implementing more comprehensive reuse technologies must factor in how to integrate with these existing systems.
A matter of location
Beyond industry- and plant-specific design considerations, another concern is proximity.
It’s often viable for industry to use treated effluent from nearby water reclamation facilities (WRF). If the WRF produces effluent of the right quality to meet industrial needs, this approach may make the most sense, chiefly due to affordability. WRF effluent reuse often demands lower capital and operational costs, as it minimizes the extent of onsite treatment infrastructure.
Yet, WRF sourcing is not always the right approach. WRF effluent can experience variability in its characteristics, such as microconstituents and other regulated constituents, that can make it unsuitable for certain industrial applications. The location of the WRF effluent may be at significant distance from the industry, increasing the cost for infrastructure to convey the effluent. The ability of the WRF to accept the industry’s wastewater, such as cooling tower blowdown, should also be considered.
When WRF effluent reuse proves prohibitive, treating the industry’s wastewater on site for reuse can provide a viable alternative.
If an industry’s onsite wastewater treatment system already produces high quality effluent, a facility may be particularly well positioned to introduce industrial reuse. An added advantage of industrial effluent reuse is the opportunity for point-of-use recycling to recover water and chemicals for industrial processes. And, of course, industrial effluent reuse will provide a far more resilient water supply.
Yet onsite reuse is not without complications. Added considerations include water storage for treated water, backup water supply in case of system failures and concentrated waste stream handling and disposal for contaminated media.
Reuse in Action
Food Processing
Food production is a common application for reuse technologies. Our experts worked with a client to implement reuse at a major food processing plant, motivated by local water scarcity. One of client’s greatest challenges was effluent quality: intensive food production generated wastewater with high strength organics, nitrogen and phosphorus.
Our solution involved a treatment train including screening, dissolved air flotation, membrane bioreactor, effluent cooling, UV disinfection, and reverse osmosis. The resulting system now delivers 130,000 gallons per day of recycled water used in cooling towers and truck washing.
Electronics
Often, it’s viable to utilize both local WRF effluent reclamation and onsite reuse. Our teams delivered a world-class example of this approach at an industrial park in East Asia. The work involved two major projects: the expansion of a municipal wastewater treatment plant and a water reclamation facility at a nearby semiconductor fab owned by a top-tier chipmaker.
Our teams expanded the local WRF’s capacity to 50,000 cubic meters per day, adding capabilities to reclaim local sewage for safe discharge. Some of that reclaimed water was then diverted for treatment at the new water reclamation plant at the nearby fab, whose 30,000 cubic-meter-per-day capacity supports process reuse.
Reclaiming the future
Climate change is altering the nature of the industrial sector. Not only has it accelerated the manufacture of clean technologies, it’s also reoriented how industry itself operates. Drought has become a fact of life for many new industrial facilities—and so too has water reuse.
Whether derived locally or onsite, reclaimed water promises greater profitability, sustainability and reliability for industrial companies. It may seem complex to implement, yet it has become not merely viable, but mission-critical across an array of applications. As climate change accelerates, it’s likely to prove even more so.
Learn more about how we’re delivering water reuse solutions for clients around the world.