Significant Cost Savings From The Use Of Recycled (Gray) Water

Situation: A 400MW coal fired European power plant was forced to use high cost potable water for their boilers, while feeding their cooling towers with the lower cost discharge from a sewage treatment facility. There were high phosphate and hardness levels in the gray water which prevented water usage from being decreased in the cooling circuit, or from being used in the boilers.

Task: Save money on overall water usage, specifically reduce the potable water needs and make better use of the available gray water.

Solution: Following a plant survey, the current water treatment system was reproduced using our advanced modeling software DMS: Water. Using the model, DMS could quickly review multiple scenarios using its team of consulting engineers.

Taking advantage of the knowledge sharing capabilities of the software, DMS personnel conferred on the project. The on-site engineer in the UK discussed possible solutions with an expert from the US via the Internet capabilities of the model without the need for international travel or additional charges to the client. Multiple scenarios were quickly reviewed and opportunities to save in excess of $600,000 annually for an initial capital investment of less than $1 million.

The team also investigated methods to optimize the entire water treatment system and identified additional longer term savings of over $500,000 annually for an additional capital expenditure of less than $2 million.

Total time for developing viable solutions, which identified savings in excess of $1 million per year, was less than 2 weeks.