Catching up with INSPIREWater: Increasing water and raw material efficiency in Europe’s process industry

When the INSPIREWater project ended in 2020, it had developed sustainable technological solutions for more efficient water use. Three years later, we get an update on some of these technologies that were close to full-scale implementation, while others needed further development.

Industrial Technologies

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European industry must develop more sustainable and efficient water technologies. This is also key to boosting its competitiveness, because a large amount of energy is consumed for industrial water treatment.

In terms of sustainable development, efficient water use is closely associated with the efficient use and reuse of other resources, such as energy, chemicals and raw materials. To develop sustainable solutions, the process industry needs a holistic water management approach.

To address these issues, the EU-funded INSPIREWater project introduced a water management model and tested and validated technological solutions, such as those for removing metal particles and recovering both water and chemicals. These innovations were successfully demonstrated in three case studies and reinforced by a holistic water management framework that complements companies’ current management structures.

Since INSPIREWater ended, further optimisation tests on the recovery of phosphoric acid in the stainless steel industry’s pickling process have been carried out by project coordinator IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and partner Alleima Tube AB, a Swedish manufacturer. Extensive tests with reused pickling acid have been performed with good results.

Alleima Tube AB, together with IVL and two suppliers of separation technologies, recently got a grant approved for full-scale installation of the phosphoric acid recovery system. “As phosphorus is one of the critical materials, the possibility to recover phosphorous, instead of ending up as a waste, is very important,” explains Staffan Filipsson, a researcher at IVL.

“Without support from the EU, this relatively high-risk project would most probably not have been run,” comments Filipsson. “In addition to the strong possibility that this process will be fully implemented, all involved partners have gained important knowledge for future similar projects involving recovery of process chemicals directly at the source, in other words, integrated into the process.”

Keywords

INSPIREWater, process industry, water, water use, water management, energy, phosphoric acid, pickling