Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2006TX229B

Property-Based Management and Optimization of Water Usage and Discharge in Industrial Facilities

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2006 Start Date: 2006-03-01 End Date: 2007-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,000

Principal Investigators: Arwa Rabie, Mahmoud El-Halwagi

Project Summary: Industrial facilities are among the most intensive users and dischargers of water. standard design techniques for industrial pollution prevention P2 and management of water usage and discharge in the process industries have been traditionally based on tracking individual chemical species. Nonetheless, many of the overarching issues dictating P2 and water-usage and recycle strategies are not component dependent, but are driven by properties and functionalities. This project is aimed at developing systematic design techniques to optimize the usage and discharge of water in industrial facilities by using the new paradigm of property integration. We define property integration as a functionality-based, holistic approach to the allocation and manipulation of water/wastewater streams and processing units which is based on tracking, adjustment, assignment, and matching of functionalities throughout the process. The proposed work will demonstrate that in addition to the identification of cost-effective water management and pollution-prevention strategies for industrial systems, significant economic benefits will accrue as a result of optimizing the usage of water resources, minimizing treatment costs, maximizing the recovery of valuable materials, and debottlenecking the process. Furthermore, the generic nature of this research will enable its applicability to wastewater minimization in a wide variety of industrial facilities.