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Untapped opportunities for Scotland’s industrial water users

Untapped opportunities - Energy Efficiency Business Support · UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 2 Not only do they pay for water via the unit cost, but

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Page 1: Untapped opportunities - Energy Efficiency Business Support · UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 2 Not only do they pay for water via the unit cost, but

Untapped opportunities for Scotland’s industrial water users

Page 2: Untapped opportunities - Energy Efficiency Business Support · UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 2 Not only do they pay for water via the unit cost, but

UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 2

Not only do they pay for water via the unit cost, but they also often pay to treat it (e.g. soften it) and heat it - increasing the value of the resource even further.

Industrial sites often use significant amounts of “high value” water.

And then of course, they face the final, additional cost of discharging used water via in-house wastewater treatment works, tankers or straight to drain.

These organisations, typically in the food and drink, manufacturing, engineering, chemical or other industrial sectors, stand to gain the most by taking steps to become more efficient with their use of water.

But what actions can be taken? There are a host of competing technologies and projects that can help businesses save water, and money. What projects would have the biggest impact?

If you are an industrial water user, and would like to know what your biggest water efficiency opportunities are, then look no further.

Resource Efficient Scotland has spoken with many of the country’s leading organisations active in this area, including academics, water retailers, consultancies, and technological solutions providers.

We have drawn upon their knowledge, experience and expertise to uncover the five biggest untapped water efficiency opportunities for industrial businesses . . .

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 3

Educate staff

Untapped opportunity

One

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 4

Untapped opportunity number 1Educate staff

Education of staff is strategically very important. Collectively, behaviours of staff could save a great deal of water.Richard Allan, James Hutton Institute

Very few industrial/commercial businesses I have visited provide thorough, site specific training on water and effluent costs/impacts/legal implications. Taking time out to properly train staff and run improvement workshops can make a significant impact, as often the operators are the people with the best solutions and know the process inside out. Human error is in my experience the most common cause of loss of effluent compliance.Paul Young, Mabbett & Associates

This is extremely important but should be part of the organisational fabric/culture, not as a standalone item.Alan Lowdon, Technology Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde

What is it?

As can be seen time and time again in organisations across Scotland, you do not always have to make large investments in new technologies to make improvements and cost savings. In terms of implementing changes to your water and effluent management, the experts agree that your staff are, once again, your number one asset.

It is important that colleagues are informed of the reasons for reducing water and better managing effluent on site. People can often be averse to change, but informing them of the reasons and benefits of the change, can pave the way to a smooth transition.

Induction training, followed by regular staff updates and refresher training should incorporate water and trade effluent practices. This should highlight the company’s expectations in terms of acceptable and unacceptable practice.

What are the benefits?

Educated staff will be aware of the expectations of them and will understand why changes are being implemented. The success of all water efficiency campaigns, and implementing process improvements will require staff to understand why the change is being implemented.

Getting your staff on board will help embed change, and will encourage them to identify further opportunities for improvements. This will help you get the most out of your water efficiency improvements.

Is it applicable to me?

In a word . . . yes.

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 5

Install equipment to treat wastewater on site

re-use

Untapped opportunity

Two

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 6

Untapped opportunity number 2Install equipment to treat wastewater on site

On site treatment can minimise volumes of waste discharged to sewer or water course, associated costs and may allow recovery of reusable material.Thames Water Waste Services

There are not many organisations addressing these opportunities due to high capital costs and lack of understanding of the returns.Mike Hogg, Clearfleau

What is it?

If you currently use water in your processes, you will likely produce a trade effluent that requires a consent to discharge into the public sewerage system. Trade effluent is charged using the Mogden Formula. This formula calculates your costs by considering the effort required to treat your effluent to an acceptable quality that can be discharged back into the environment; considering both strength and volume.

Depending on the contents of your effluent, different technologies can be employed at your site to breakdown or remove some of the contaminants. This can help reduce the strength of your effluent, and can lead to reduced trade effluent costs.

In particular, if you can reduce the organic content of your effluent you can make savings on your trade effluent costs. Technologies such as dissolved air floatation (DAF), sumps, filters and settlement tanks can help remove some of this content.

If you currently tanker your effluent off site, it is worth investigating the reasons why you cannot discharge to the public sewerage system. It might be possible to employ a technological solution to remove the difficult contaminants allowing you to discharge to the system in the future.

Additional treatment technologies can also be used to further improve the quality of your trade effluent, and could allow you to reuse your wastewater in your process.

In particular, where you have processes that do not require water of a potable standard (e.g. cleaning, cooling, irrigation or toilet flushing), there could be significant savings from treating

and reusing the water. This will help reduce your water demand, and your trade effluent / wastewater volumes. Technologies might include membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis or UV treatment.

What are the benefits?

Installing on site wastewater treatment can be expensive, but given the right conditions, reducing the strength or volume of your trade effluent can lead to substantial savings.

While there are ongoing costs that need to be taken into consideration including the addition of chemicals (e.g. flocculants) and labour time to run the system, on site wastewater treatments can increase the control you have over your effluent, and help reduce non-compliances against your discharge consent.

By treating and enabling the reuse of wastewater on site, additional savings can be made on the cost of water supply, and trade effluent volume. In addition, where heat can be recovered, then additional savings can be made on energy bills.

Is it applicable to me?

All organisations that produce a trade effluent have the opportunity to put in place on site treatment technologies to reduce the strength of their effluent.

If you have effluent with a high organic content, or currently tanker your effluent off site you stand to benefit the most.

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 7

Install automatic meter reading meters or data loggers

Untapped opportunity

Three

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Untapped opportunity number 3Install automatic meter reading (AMR) meters or data loggers

The profile of ‘big data’ means that there is an increased level of awareness around the importance and use of good quality data for operational performance improvement.Alan Lowdon, University of Strathclyde, Technology Innovation Centre

Without good quality data and the ability to maintain a comprehensive water mass balance, a site can’t properly assess its water efficiency. Data logging and flow metering adds so much value to the projects we do - time and time again it helps us in detecting leaks and opportunities…Sometimes expensive AMR/telemetry systems aren’t necessarily needed, simple sub-meter installations suffice.Paul Young, Mabbett & Associates

What is it?

AMR meters collect consumption information and send it to a central database for collation and analysis. They allow you to identify excessive or unusual consumption, and to carry out diagnostic checks.

It is now possible to synchronise AMR meters with a smartphone and a Building Management System (BMS) with alarms set for when consumption goes above a certain level. Data loggers or sub-meters can also be installed in areas of high, or variable water consumption to improve monitoring; and at different sites, to allow operating comparisons.

AMR can be expensive, so the alternative is to manually read sub-meters. These are cheaper, but rely on someone to read the meters regularly, and input the data for processing.

What are the benefits?

By improving your water consumption monitoring, you can understand it better, and take steps to make improvements. AMR can provide real time consumption data without relying on someone to manually take readings, and can identify processes or activities where water use is excessive. This can lead to process improvements and cost savings.

Alarms can be used to enable unusual consumption to be quickly highlighted, allowing for investigation. This can reduce the impact and cost of leaks which previously may have only been identified after a quarterly bill was received.

AMR can also be an invaluable tool as part of a water efficiency programme, enabling changes to be made to processes and activities, and the impact of these changes quickly assessed.

Is it applicable to me?

AMR is useful for all organisations wishing to understand their water use better. It should be of particular interest to multi-site organisations, those with multiple and/or variable water-using activities, sites prone to leaks, and those with difficult-to-access water meters.

For smaller organisations, the use of manually read sub-meters on high or variable water consuming activities is likely to be adequate. It is always important to understand how your organisation uses water before taking steps to reduce it.

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 9

Sludge management technologies AD

Untapped opportunity

Four

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Untapped opportunity number 4Sludge management technologies

. . . to determine the opportunity, you need to assess the cost of sludge treatment with the cost of disposal.Pearl Machray, Business Stream

It is an investment that can provide payback with reduced heat and power costs, and additional revenue.Mark Davies, MSE Systems

This won’t apply or be cost-effective for all sites – but for dairy, and other food and drink sector businesses, effluents are of particular interest.Paul Young, Mabbett & Associates

What is it?

If you have some form of on site wastewater treatment plant, sludge management technologies will allow you to turn your effluent waste into a resource.

For example, anaerobic digestion (AD) is a collection of processes where microorganisms break down biodegradable material contained within your sludge, in the absence of oxygen, to produce biogas and a digestate. The biogas can be burned to produce renewable heat and power on your site, and excess electricity can even be exported to the grid. The digestate, if managed properly, can be spread to land as a fertiliser creating a potential new revenue stream.

If you currently tanker sludge off site, minimising the liquid content can also help reduce your costs through reduced volume. Sludge and slurry dewatering equipment such as centrifuges, screw presses and filter presses can separate out your solid and liquid components allowing you to manage each component separately.

What are the benefits?

Managing effluent and waste can be expensive and costs increase if effluent has to be tankered from your site, or sent to the local Wastewater Treatment Works via a trade effluent discharge consent.

By managing your waste and effluent on site you can benefit from it as a resource by producing heat and power which can be used on site or exported to the grid, thus reducing your energy costs. Although initial capital costs are high, savings can also be significant. The government has introduced incentive schemes to encourage on site renewable heat and power through schemes such as the Feed In Tariff (FIT) and the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

Is it applicable to me?

Sludge management will be applicable to you if you have an on site wastewater treatment works, or are tankering effluent off site. It will be particularly beneficial if your effluent has a high organic content.

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UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND’S INDUSTRIAL WATER USERS 11

Cleaning in place systems

Untapped opportunity

Five cleaning

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Many businesses in the food, drink and chemical sectors still rely on water intensive manual cleaning processes, or are not getting the best out of automatic CIP plant due to settings or flows not being optimised. Excessive addition of caustics or acids can also lead to downstream effluent problems.Paul Young, Mabbett & Associates

. . . this should be the most obvious choice for gaining efficient use of water.Thames Water Technical Services

What is it?

Cleaning in place (CIP) is a highly efficient method of cleaning pipework or vessels (tanks) using chemicals, heat and water without dismantling plant. It can typically reduce water use by 40%.

Because CIP is an automated process with no human contact, strong detergents can be used. Combined with a longer contact time, mechanical energy and heat, this method becomes more effective than manual, soak or foam cleaning. CIP systems offer fast, efficient, reliable and repeatable cleaning of many types of process plant.

CIP is not new and has long been utilised in brewing, beverage, food, biotechnology and chemical industries, where fully automatic and reliable cleaning and disinfection is required. But our conversations with the industry experts indicate that there are many opportunities to improve these existing installations, and reduce what is often excessive water and chemical use. Here are a few examples:

• on a CIP set that washes different sizes of vessels, adjust timings so that they are not just defaulted to the settings for the largest vessel;

• reduce flow rate and cycle times, and adjust cycle volumes according to requirements;

• establish if all cycles are actually required;

• minimise hot water use where possible; and

• monitor rinse water quality to indicate degree of product removal and to reduce unnecessary over rinsing.

What are the benefits?

Cleaning can account for as much as 70% of a site’s water use. Excessive use of water for cleaning brings many additional costs, such as labour, downtime, lost materials, cleaning chemicals, and energy for heating and pumping.

Automating cleaning routines using CIP to optimise water and chemical usage will not only cut your water supply bills, and take labour costs out of the equation, but can also have the added benefits of reducing the volume and concentration of effluent.

Is it applicable to me?

If you use vessels or pipework that require cleaning or soaking, manual control can use excessive amounts of water and CIP systems may be applicable. If you already have CIP systems installed, they should be reviewed regularly to ensure they are still operating efficiently and adjusted according to changing requirements.

Untapped opportunity number 5Cleaning in place systems

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Further supportResource Efficient Scotland can give you expert, one-to-one support to help you improve your resource use and save money.Funded by the Scottish Government, all our advice for SMEs is completely free, independent and confidential.

Give us a call today on 0808 808 2268.

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