Industrial circular water use practices through the application of a conceptual water efficiency framework in the process industry.

Increased industrial water demand and resource depletion require the incorporation of sustainable and efficient water and wastewater management solutions in the industrial sector. Conventional and advanced treatment technologies, closed-water loops at different levels from an industrial process to collaborative networks among industries within the same or another sector and digital tools and services facilitate the materialization of circular water use practices. To this end, the scope of this paper is the application of the Conceptual Water Efficiency Framework (CWEF), which has been developed within the AquaSPICE project aspiring to enhance water circularity within industries in a holistic way. Four water-intensive process industries (two chemical industries, one oil refinery plant and one meat production plant) are examined, revealing its adaptability, versatility and flexibility according to the requirements of each use case. It is evident that the synergy of process, circular and digital innovations can promote sustainability, contribute to water conservation in the industry, elaborating a compact approach to be replicated from other industries.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: George Arampatzis reports financial support, article publishing charges, and travel were provided by H2020-AquaSPICE project (European Commission, CE-SPIRE-07-2020, Horizon, 2020). Efthalia Karkou reports a relationship with Technical University of Crete that includes: employment. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.