Membracon achieves eighty percent water reduction for key industrial process

For a just-in-time supplier to the automotive industry, a wastewater recycling system from Membracon has created annual savings of more than £63,000, by reducing water usage from 108,000 litres per day to just 21,000 litres per day.

Without site space restrictions, which limited installation to a single-pass system, Membracon would have actually been able to reduce wastewater discharge to just 5,400 litres per day: an annual cost-saving of over £75,000. However, the newly created savings will, in time, enable the wastewater plant to be moved to a different part of the premises, allowing a secondary filtration system to be added. This will then increase savings from 80% to 95%.

Matt Williams, Managing Director of Membracon, said: “Nobody wants downtime and a loss in production, especially in the pressurised automotive industry. Our customer was having to run its pre-treatment process lines at full capacity; constantly topping up the rinse tanks, which required pure water production to keep everything clean. In addition to tackling increasing costs, the company was also determined for us to help them reduce their environmental impact.”

Membracon had conducted a full-spectrum analysis of the just-in-time supplier’s wastewater. By understanding the precise levels of contaminants, the most cost-effective and easy to maintain solution was then custom designed to suit the customer’s specific needs.

Ultimately, the wastewater recycling system that was introduced by Membracon has not only cleaned up the wastewater and reduced discharge, but it has also enabled clean water to be reintroduced upstream. This has significantly reduced the cost of fresh water to be brought into the process.