Integrated Wastewater Recovery and Reuse via Waste Heat Utilization

A variety of industrial wastewater recovery technologies for different areas and applications has been developed over the years, including primarily thermal and membrane processes. The main thermal processes include atmospheric distillation, distillation with mechanical vapor compression, vacuum distillation, multi-stage flash distillation, multi-effect distillation with thermal vapor compression, etc. [1,2]. The membrane processes contain reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and nanofiltration. The multi-stage flash distillation and reverse osmosis processes dominate in most applications. Wastewater recovery and re-use technologies have been expanding rapidly in recent decades. The market is also driven by the falling costs of wastewater recovery, which are due to the technological advances in the process. The costs of clean water produced by wastewater recovery process dropped considerably over the years as a result of reductions in price of equipment, reductions in power consumption and advances in system design and operating experiences. In this work state-of-the art and innovative wastewater recovery/re-use technologies are estimated and compared in their features and cost respects. The new technology is discussed that allows increasing in energy efficiency of the wastewater recycling and reduce electricity consumption associated with conventional methods. Successful development and implementation of the technology for food processing applications will provide large energy and water savings to the industry. These savings are tied to an energy efficiency increase and reduction in pumping power for process water supply. The ability to integrate waste heat recovery with wastewater reuse also leads to product cost reduction opportunities for producers.