Water-smart strategies to support decision-making for water resource management in the industrial context

ABSTRACT Efficient water resource management and shrinking freshwater sources are among the biggest challenges that the industry is facing. Best practices, optimization methodologies, technologies and tools are being required to better monitor the water systems and manage the water needs of industries. With this goal, this paper introduces different water-smart strategies being developed around the industrial Antwerp area in Belgium, where increasing levels of salinity are affecting the quality of the water used by different stakeholders within their activities. In view of better management of the surface water, a sensor network has been implemented to provide real-time monitoring of the water quality, and an operational model is used to obtain insights on the water quality dynamics to support water management decision-making. On the industrial side, tests with highly instrumented pilot facilities have provided valuable information regarding the feasibility of reducing water consumption, with a focus on the operation of cooling towers and the reuse of industrial water streams by using advanced treatment trains. In complement, a digital twin for cooling towers has been developed to study the influence of the water quality and test different operation scenarios in view of reducing water consumption and improving energy efficiency.