Cultural changes and water-asset realignment to support water-reuse projects

Although product and energy integration is cornerstones in the design and operation of large, integrated chemical plants, generally the effective use of water is not. Water is regarded as cheap, non-hazardous and readily available. The awareness of environmental impacts and the ‘true’ cost of water have made water-systems optimization (WSO) an important topic. The optimization of water use at large, integrated chemical complexes has many challenges related to the scale of the operations, the integration of the individual processes, the variety of water uses, the variety of water qualities required and planned production expansions. These challenges have often made design and selection of water-reuse projects difficult and time consuming. This paper discusses cultural changes and water-asset realignment resulting from a WSO pilot study at a major European chemical-manufacturing site.