Boiler Water Treatment: Lessons Learned

The “Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth” is a publication series highlighting opportunities to solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges by harnessing technological innovations supported by new and effective approaches to governance, financing and multistakeholder collaboration. We have a unique opportunity to harness this Fourth Industrial Revolution – and the societal shifts it triggers – to help address environmental issues and transform how we manage our shared global environment. The Fourth Industrial Revolution could, however, also exacerbate existing threats to environmental security or create entirely new risks that will need to be considered and managed.  Harnessing these opportunities and proactively managing these risks will require a transformation of the “enabling environment”, namely the governance frameworks and policy protocols, investment and financing models, the prevailing incentives for technology development, and the nature of societal engagement.

Introduction: The industrial water user should determine if implementation of each identified BMP measure to achieve water savings would be cost effective. The analysis should determine the cost effectiveness to the industrial water user of the lower direct costs of the saved water and other cost savings that may also accrue. Many operating procedures and controls that improve water use efficiency should be implemented simply as a matter of good practice. In other cases the industrial user may decide to implement BMPs based on non-cost factors such as public good will or political reasons. In evaluating equipment and process additions or changes, each industry should utilize its own criteria for making capital improvement decisions.