Demineralised process water treatment in industry and in the medical environment
Demineralised process water treatment
Companies from all sectors of the manufacturing industry need plants tailored to their needs for the production of a wide range of process water qualities. This is indispensable against the background of the respective process requirements, to conserve the important resource of water and at the same time to take into account the economic interests of the companies. It is crucial to look at the individual process in detail and to examine the different requirements on the media quality of the process water used, in order to achieve the optimum in process water treatment.
The term demineralised water refers to “fully desalinated water”. Depending on the degree of purity, a distinction is made between different grades. Permeate (derived from the Latin “permeare”, which means to penetrate) is the term used for the product produced by the reverse osmosis process. This process is a so-called membrane process. In this process, chemically or physically pretreated water is forced under high pressure through a very fine-pored membrane and freed as far as possible from ionogenic substances. The so-called diluate can be produced through further treatment stages such as the electro-deionisation process (EDI) or the use of mixed bed resins (resin mixtures that absorb cations and anions still in the water). DILUAT is a solution that is low in salt or ions. This ultrapure water has a residual conductivity value of less than 0.2 µS/cm.
VE process water treatment always includes a wide variety of treatment stages. The decisive factor for the selection of suitable processes is the desired water quality and the prevailing quality of the source water. Another component of the process engineering consideration is the optimisation of the process combinations against the background of maximum yield rates of the water used with simultaneously minimised waste water volume flows as well as a reduction in the use of chemical auxiliary materials to the absolute minimum.
In some cases, recovery processes are also becoming increasingly important. An example of this is the recovery of copper and nickel from process waste water, e.g. from PCB production and conventional surface finishing. Here, these metals are separated to a purity level of > 95% using optimised rinsing processes, selective ion exchangers and high-performance electrolysis and can thus be returned to the value-added cycle.
No matter what area of life we live in, whether it is eating food, taking medication, driving a car, using electronic products such as mobile phones and laptops, etc., we are surrounded by a multitude of things every day whose production or availability would not be possible without water and its professional treatment.
Find out more about some of the areas of application, processes and technologies used on the following pages:
- Reduce energy costs through water treatment
- Pharmaceutical water treatment
- Boiler feed water treatment
- Blowdown cooling towers
- Micropollutants Wastewater treatment plants
Although drinking water is considered the most monitored foodstuff in Germany, physical/chemical treatment is always necessary.
We present some of the most important water treatment processes here:
Not all water is the same and the composition of the source water and the desired water quality for the respective process have a variety of backgrounds. This also means that each water treatment must be planned individually against the background of the prevailing initial situation and the desired objective. The combination of the individual processes, their metrological monitoring and, as a result, control requires a high level of technical expertise and, at the same time, enables an optimisation of the resources consumed and, at the same time, the highest possible availability of the treatment technology & thus production capacities in a multitude of applications.