Water Consumption at Pulp and Paper Mills, 2007 Engineering, Pulping & Environmental Conference

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One of the definitions of water consumption is “water that is no longer available because it has been evaporated, transpired, incorporated into products, or otherwise removed from the water environment.” [1]. The concept of water consumption is gaining importance as one of the methods to manage water resources in local or regional watersheds or basins. The primary method of estimating water consumption is the use of water consumption coefficients, commonly agreed upon values less than unity, which are multiplied by the total water intake to generate consumptive water losses at a facility. The major shortcoming of the use of water consumption coefficients is the general lack of accurate, scientifically verified coefficients for use in calculations. This presentation reviews the sources of consumptive water losses at pulp and paper manufacturing facilities and presents more refined coefficients for use in water consumption calculations. Chemical pulp mills tend to have larger consumptive water losses than other types of mills at the same specific total water usage because of evaporative losses from the recovery area and cooling tower circuits.