Industrial water is a growing problem
Every year it costs more to buy, more to treat, and more to discharge.
The Scale
U.S. industrial facilities use more than 18.2 billion gallons of water every day, according to EPA estimates. A large share of that is fresh drinking water used for processes that never required drinking-water quality.
Water that could be used many times is used once.
The Regulation
The Clean Water Act governs what industrial facilities are permitted to discharge. EPA has established effluent limitation guidelines across 59 industrial categories, each with its own pollutants of concern and its own limits.
Compliance is not optional, and it is not cheap. Limits tighten over time, and a facility that meets today's requirements may not meet the next revision.
The cost of treating it
Conventional treatment satisfies the requirement while creating a second problem.
Chemical processes leave residuals behind in the discharge, and the chemical waste itself has to be managed and disposed of. Filtration consumes significant energy and produces sludge that must be dewatered, hauled away, and disposed of. Filter media eventually reaches the end of its service life and becomes waste in its own right.
In most cases, the treatment chemicals are not the largest expense. Handling what they leave behind is.
Where that leaves industry
Facilities are paying three times for the same water:
once to buy it, once to treat it, and once to dispose of what the treatment produces.
Recovering the water and using it again addresses all three at once.