Water saving and decreasing make-up water consumption according to industrial wastewater treatment systems, including brine evaporator, crystallizer, and adiabatic processes

Water scarcity is observed in the region selected to realize the new ethylene production plant; therefore, all feasible solutions to minimize the total water consumption and maximize wastewater recovery must be identified. This case study aimed to maximize water recovery and reuse of the net water consumption for the ethylene plants. Hence, the best methods with appropriate configurations were selected for addressing the optimization of wastewater treatment (WWT). The methods included de-oiling, dissolved air flotation (DAF), reverse osmosis (RO), membrane biological reactor (MBR), ultra-filtration, and nano-filtration. Thus, they were simulated to find the optimized configuration based on the economic and technical factors. Moreover, the study aimed to optimize make-up water by implementing the best designs and arrangements. The analysis showed that the use of an adiabatic cooling tower with ultrafiltration, RO package, de-oiling, membrane biological reactor, and so forth (Case 8) is optimized and this option appears to be the best in terms of economic/technical factors. It was also found that this configuration leads to water recovery in the raw water system by almost up to 92% and reaches 86% for wastewater treatment.