Industrial water treatment is a term that covers several different types of processes and systems. Some examples of common industrial water treatment companies works, processes, and systems include:
Water recycling, wastewater treatment, greywater treatment, and stormwater management are all forms of industrial water treatment. The simplest explanation for what industrial water treatment does is to make water safe for use by the industry in which it will be employed. For example, if you have an industry that manufactures consumable goods, the last thing they want to do is to cause harm to their customer base through contamination or dilution of their products due to poor quality or incorrectly treated process water. Therefore, water used in food processing plants must meet very stringent standards so as not to contaminate the food being produced. Similarly, water used within a high-tech manufacturing facility must be clean and free of chemical contaminants to not damage delicate circuitry.
In order to achieve these standards, industrial water treatment companies have several options for them depending on the nature of their business and what they do with the water once it has been treated. The most basic form of industrial water treatment is recycling. Recycling involves evaporators or reverses osmosis systems that concentrate the impurities in treated wastewater while removing many of its dissolved components. This process leaves behind a considerable amount of “sludge,” which can then be processed further through distillation or drying (or both) before being disposed of properly at an approved landfill site. The benefits of this system include reduced raw material consumption and the ability to recycle a considerable amount of wastewater.
In addition, industrial water treatment companies also have options for employing less conventional methods of treating process water. For example, bioremediation is a process that uses microorganisms in conjunction with chemical treatments to remove contaminants that traditional processes like filtration or distillation cannot remove. Though this method is less conventional than others, it can be extremely effective when employed properly (and has even been used in NASA experiments at the International Space Station). Another option for industrial water treatment companies would be utilizing membrane bioreactors in order to treat wastewater. A membrane bioreactor system employs live biological cultures in an enclosed vessel filled with thin sheets of highly permeable material (i.e., a membrane). Wastewater is run through the vessel, and biological cultures on the membranes break down contaminants into less harmful byproducts.
Finally, industrial water treatment companies may choose to use physical treatments such as media filtration or membrane filtration in order to clean process water. Media filters work on the principle of pore size: larger particles cannot pass through smaller pores and are therefore filtered out while smaller molecules continue to flow. This method works best when paired with other chemical treatments designed to break down contaminants that would otherwise be trapped by the filter material itself.