Germany and The Netherlands

Technology focus for freshwater intake reduction

Boehlen (DE)

Terneuzen (NL)

Background and state of the art

The Dow Chemical Company connects chemistry and innovation to the principles of sustainability. Dow’s businesses include specialty chemicals, advanced materials, and plastics. Due to the tight water balance in the region south of Leipzig, the Boehlen location of Dow is classified as a water scarce. I-Parc Dow Terneuzen is under severe water stress as it is located in a coastal area with very limited availability of fresh water. Therefore, sustainable solutions for the responsible use of water resources are sought for long-term development at the two locations. Both Boehlen and Terneuzen strive to reduce their freshwater intake intensity by:

enhancing the internal recycle of various process water streams – these comprise but are not limited to cooling tower blowdown and dilution steam blowdown streams.
creating a next level of site water management by using smart monitoring, algorithms and control on raw water, discharge and recycle streams.

Actions and expected results

The main product at the end of this project will be an implementation plan with the potential to further reduce the freshwater intake at both locations by an additional 20%. This plan will comprise all (technical and financial) details needed to establish:

Digital solutions will be applied for:

an optimised freshwater allocation for producing cooling tower make-up water suitable to operate downstream cooling towers at significantly enhanced recycling rates;
the internal re-use of cooling tower blowdown streams and;
the treatment and direct reuse of slightly polluted process water and dilution steam blowdown streams.

Digitalization of the water reuse scheme will include the design for full digital smart control and integration in the existing water grid for current operations.