Thank you for Subscribing to Environmental Business Review Weekly Brief
Environmental Business Review | Friday, August 05, 2022
Sustainability and digital transformation are important trends in supporting saving energy and supporting water stability.
FREMONT, CA: Water plays an important role in almost all kinds of production. Regardless, it is an afterthought for process manufacturing companies irrespective of their endless needs, clean flow, and difficulty managing water. Although playing a vital role across the economy, water is often managed in a fragmented manner, departing national and regional growth methods disconnected from insights into accessible and planned water resources. This causes competition across consumers, mismanaged trade-offs, disturbances to operations, and under-investment in essential infrastructure.
Abiding by the Law
Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.
While there is instability in water and wastewater management, businesses are driving pressure from environmental laws and regulations. Government regulations are growing to be stricter about the treatment of downstream water that people or animals might devour, indicating that manufacturers are required to recycle or clean wastewater before it exits an industry. Upstream water is also a topic of process use or cooling. Chemical processors must ensure that they have good water quality for their processes. New methods have emerged in the wastewater treatment segments to address water quality control requirements.
Sustainability
A sustaining water flow technique is one of the essential procedures that has grown across the board recently. This contains conserving water and energy while sticking to regulations and addressing water scarcity. Water recycling and sending water back upstream are major strategies to increase the sustainability of water management. Regrettably, recycling is a pricey endeavor, and many companies might not be equipped with the tools to complete recycling methods.
Another method is zero liquid discharge, where the producers take out the discharge of used water during production. However, this method has challenges and mainly uses in regions with a water shortage. Besides, this method requires a lot of energy.
Many processes can support and decrease the cost of cleaning the water. Some examples are biological processes that include membrane-aerated biofilm reactors (MBR), advanced oxidation processes (AOP), and advanced filter materials. Another way is chemical treatments that make water safe to consume or at least safe to vacant into streams, rivers, and lakes.
Digital Transformation
Before the explosion of COVID-19, engineers and operators were necessary onsite. Regardless, the pandemic transitioned the world’s workforce to off-site or hybrid work conditions. Numerous companies faced the issue of employee turnover, which caused more digitization efforts. This is followed by industrial analytics, IoT, and automation appearing as more critical factors for the water and wastewater industries. Engineers and operators had started to embrace digital methods even before the pandemic to track trends in water processing.
Still, unlike chemical plants and other businesses, the water industry has not been as swift to adopt digitalization. Additionally, with different parameters for various products, digital transformation needs to be aligned with companies that utilize them. Analytics, automation, IoT, and self-analyzation trends can help prevent water and wastewater issues. It also helps engineers and operators make efficient decisions respecting ways to sustain water and decrease energy costs by adopting a more digital-friendly industry.
More in News