EU subsidy promise for research into Solvic water re-use
Working in cooperation with Evides Industriewater and VITO, Solvic (Antwerp), a subsidiary of the Solvay Group, has obtained a European subsidy to further extend its ongoing feasibility research into reprocessing waste water and water flows. The subsidy is part of the European Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Solvic is part of a consortium of 19 companies that submitted the ‘Economically and Ecologically Efficient Water Management in the European Chemical Industry’ project or ‘E4 Water' in short. Each member will be assigned part of the subsidy in accordance with their part in the project. Awarding this subsidy indicates strong support for, and recognition of, the efforts made by Solvic in the field of sustainability in order to considerably reduce the water footprint of its production location in Antwerp in the long-term by reducing the use of drinking water.
Background
Since the summer of 2010 Evides Industriewater has been supervising the operational management of, and research into, a pilot plant on Solvic’s site which is intended for reprocessing waste water into demineralised water. The plant is part of a feasibility study and is equipped with UF and RO membrane technologies. The mobile plant purifies approximately 30 cubic metres of waste water into demineralised water.
In mid December 2010, Solvic, together with its project partners that include Evides Industriewater, participated in the subsidy application for the E4 Water Project in the European FP7 programme. On 30 June 2011 the European Commission made it known that the E4 Water Project of the consortium that Solvic is part of, was eligible for a subsidy.
Awarding the subsidy will enable Evides and Solvic to extend the existing feasibility study, which consists of research into the technological and financial feasibility of reprocessing waste water into demineralised water, to include other water flows. This concerns other water flows such as Solvic’s remaining waste water as well as that from third parties and brackish dock water from the port. Solvic’s ultimate objective is to further optimise water management and to preserve water resources by greatly reducing the intake of drinking water. Based on the experience acquired with the pilot plant it will be possible to implement the engineering for a full-scale plant. Evides Industriewater has the ambition of realising the design, construction and operational management of the plant for Solvic on the basis of a Design, Build, Finance & Operate contract.
Solvay, and consequently its subsidiary Solvic, have anchored Sustainable Development in their policy vision. They consider the realisation of reusing water to be a challenging contribution to a sustainable society. The reuse of waste water and water reduces the intake of drinking water after all, and so contributes to the worldwide goal of minimising the water footprint and completing the water cycle.
DOW Terneuzen is also part of the winning consortium and Evides Industriewater is DOW Terneuzen’s water partner as well. Participation in these two projects is strategically important for Evides Industriewater because it makes intensive knowledge exchange possible between world players in the chemical industry with the common goal of completing the water cycle wherever in the world that may be. This fits in very well with Evides Industriewater’s worldwide growth ambitions and its current focus on Germany, China and of course, Belgium.
Evides Industriewater already has good experiences in reusing waste water for the production of demineralised water. It uses the effluent from the sewage treatment plant in the municipality of Terneuzen (NL) for the production of demineralised water for Dow Chemical. At the sewage treatment plant in Harnaschpolder close to Delft, which is the biggest wastewater treatment plant in The Netherlands, a long-term pilot research is currently being carried out into reprocessing effluent into a reliable, safe source of irrigation water for use in greenhouses. Finally, Evides has a demonstration plant in operation in the semi-desert of the northern province of Shaanxi in China, where it makes a contribution to the reuse of industrial effluent as process water for the fast developing, coal-to-chemical chemical industry there. Evides Industriewater’s experience with these types of projects and technologies can be applied in the development of reuse projects as with Solvic.
