Water Pinch Application for a Deink Mill Case Study, 1999 Pulping Conference Proceedings

Demetrios S. Koufos

American Process Inc.

Theodora Retsina

American Process Inc.

This paper presents an overview of the concepts underlying the application of mass integration analysis, commonly known as “water pinch”, as a systematic and structured approach to water conservation and water minimization. Based on these we have developed a customized methodology, which is applied to a deink mill effluent case study as a “proof of concept”, for eliminating or reducing the intake of fresh water as make-up for the recycled effluent treated water.

We identify the key contaminants of the water effluent from the deink mill and formulate targets to optimizing the case study at hand, by minimizing the intake of fresh water and the operating costs: water and energy, of the waste water treatment facility. We are able to construct a Water Re-Use Chart that displays possibilities for potential re-use and regeneration of the effluent water and allocate water flows between the different units of the facility. The identified solutions from this chart take into account environmental restrictions and economic considerations.