Reuse water to achieve better sustainability?

Global warming is a threat that has continued to grow in importance in recent years, especially now that everyone is beginning to see and feel the effects of it. For example, both private individuals and companies have noticed that longer periods of drought lead to water scarcity. This is one of the reasons why more and more companies are committed to recover and reuse different water flows. Activated carbon can play an important role in this. 

Water is a scarce resource that we have to treat with care, in an integral way over the entire water cycle. This is even more true now that climate change is leading to wetter winters, drier summers and more extreme weather phenomena. Only an integrated approach to water management will enable us to meet this challenge, which is something that industrial companies are also aware of. They are generally very dependent on water for their processes and also want to make their own efforts to guarantee the availability of water for the future and to contribute to a higher level of sustainability. They do this by collecting and purifying rainwater, reusing process water and condensate flows. 

Increased water recuperation by ‘end-of-pipe’ solution with activated carbon.

The technologies that companies use, depend heavily on the application. In the purification and recuperation of almost every type of water, activated carbon can provide very useful services. If there is still water to be discharged into the sewerage network or into surface water, activated carbon as an 'end of pipe' solution helps to ensure that companies easily meet the discharge standard.  

Ideally, there is hardly any discharge and the company can recycle a considerable part of the water flows for reuse. Activated carbon is extremely suitable to filter all kinds of organic pollutants and toxic components out of the water in a very simple way. Depending on the application, activated carbon filtration can be the solution in itself, or it can be part of a multiphase treatment plant that allows to strive for maximum water recuperation. 

Activated carbon provides clear cost savings in water management 

When production companies experience strong growth,  sooner or later they see the problem that the existing wastewater treatment plant is no longer sufficient to treat and purify the larger wastewater streams. Instead of simply investing in an expansion or renewal of the water management system, companies often use their growth scenario to reassess the integrated water management. When mapping and analysing all water flows (rainwater, wastewater, process water, cooling water, condensate flows), water recovery and reuse are often an interesting option, especially for the least contaminated waterflows. 

The use of mobile MOBICON filters from Desotec often already offers a large part of the solution and allows companies to sensibly anticipate new dry summers and low groundwater reserves. Activated carbon can be used for the purification and recovery of any water flow in the most diverse production companies. 

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At DESOTEC’s facilities, all used carbon is analysed so the right measures can be taken for handling and removing the saturated carbon out of the mobile filters. All molecules that were adsorbed on the activated carbon at the customers’ site, are desorbed inside DESOTEC’s reactivation furnaces. These contaminants are then fully destroyed, in accordance with National and European legislation, by an incineration and neutralisation setup. The entire installation and it's emissions are under continuous on-line monitoring, which guarantees that only harmless water vapour is seen exiting the chimney.