Application of water pinch technology for water and wastewater minimization in aluminum anodizing industries

This study aims to describe the application of water pinch technology in industrial water consumption management in aluminum anodizing industry. Water pinch analysis is a systematic technique for designing, optimization and retrofitting of energy, mass and water recovery networks. The selection of different operations existing in an industry has an important role in correctness of application of pinch technology. Water usages in anodizing industry are various, but researches have been shown that, it has the best efficiency on the selection of rinsing chambers to pinch technology. There are different methods in pinch technology mostly based on mass transfer of single or multiple contaminants. In this research, a new method is used to select effective contaminant to be applied to pinch analysis. This research is based on Mann and Liu’s method in single contaminant. But “the guide for classification of raw water, wastewater and recycled water for industrial and recreation” is chosen to use a complex of index contaminants as a single contaminant. This method is very simple and applicable for various industrial processes. By an index contaminant like total dissolved solids, the water usage reduced about 6.7 %. Using pinch technology and this new approach in three rinsing chambers, water usage reduced about 14.4 %.