Water-integrated scheduling of batch process plants: Modelling approach and application in technology selection

Efficient water management is becoming increasingly important in production systems, but companies often do not have any concrete strategies to implement. While there are numerous technological options for improving water efficiency in process plants, there is a lack of effective decision support to integrate water aspects in operational decision making. This paper is based on the premise that inclusion of water reuse and related technological decisions during scheduling of production operations is essential for reduction of industrial water consumption. We develop a water-integrated scheduling approach based on mathematical programming to capture the main characteristics of water flows in batch process plants. We model water quality with a practical and generic classification scheme to effectively include water reuse and treatment possibilities. The approach is able to quantify tradeoffs between production efficiency and water efficiency. We also illustrate the use of our approach in the evaluation of water reuse and regeneration technologies for typical process industry settings. Overall, our approach is able to integrate water reuse and regeneration in a relatively efficient manner, and can help reduce industrial water consumption in process industries.