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THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF
WATER
(by Alessandro BLUNDO)
This Dissertation is submitted
in part-fulfilment of the degree of
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in International Business
The European School of Economics validated by Nottingham Trent University,
2001
ABSTRACT
The following dissertation will discuss the
importance of water on our planet and the several uses of it. One of these
is concerned with the production cycles of industries, which cover quite
a
high percentage of all water uses. Unfortunately, the outcome is the
inevitable pollution of the environment due to the wastes produced by
industries.
The dissertation will concentrate mainly on the environmental situation in
Europe for the following reasons:
a) Environmental issues in Europe are becoming of grater importance
due to the growth in numbers of severe policies in matter of environmental
protection.
b) Nowadays in Europe there are many pressures on water resources
including those arising from agriculture, industry, urban areas, households
and tourism.
c) Over-abstraction of both groundwater and surface water has
demonstrated that water in Europe is becoming a finite source therefore,
there is a need for recycling.
d)The solution suggested in the dissertation (Ecobios Biotechnology)
in order to solve these problems, comes from a Member Country (Italy) of the
EEC therefore, it will be easier to expand company's business abroad thanks
to the facilitation owned by Member States such as free movements of goods/services,
capitals and labour, and also thanks to the economic incentives given by
the European Commission to those companies which are aiming at being "environmentally
friendly".
VIDEOCOLOR CASE STUDY
Project description
The manufacturing process of television kinescopes uses water in a number of
washing operations during the production cycle of the cathodic tubes and
during many other steps.
In order to convey
to the water the quality required by the process, it is
necessary to submit the fresh water,
taken by the nearby river Sacco, to a
treatment of demineralization on a resin exchange bed. About 250 m3/h of
fresh water are used, of which 200 m3/h are sent to ion exchange resins for
treatment. The manufacturing cycle of Videocolor is based on continuous
operation, 6.5 days per week on three shifts of 8 hours each. The total
amount of water involved is 6.000 m³/day and about 1.800.000 m³/year.
The washing operations of the manufacturing process produce wastewaters of
about the same amount as the incoming fresh water coming from several
process streams that are mixed and homogenized before being treated.
Present treatment of the wastewaters fulfils the demands of the present
Italian legislation and it is based on a stage of clari-flocculation, a
rough filtration through a sand bed and a treatment with activated charcoal.
This process, however, does not allow reusing the water, which contains too
many ions to make convenient its treatment in the ion exchange resin bed.
Videocolor intended therefore to study a system that would allow such a
reuse achieving in the meantime an economical advantage for the Company and
a lower environmental impact for the following reasons:
• a lower
volume of waste water to be treated;
• less fresh water taken from the river;
• a saving of about 20% in the operating costs of the fresh water treatment
plant due to a lower usage of chemicals;
A
preliminary search and investigation has indicated the technology of
Biocatalysis, owned by the company ECOBIOS Italy, Srl as the most suitable
to economically solve the problem of breaking down the organic particulate
materials and the organic colloids.
This Biotechnology consists in developing a set of bacteria specifically
designed to produce enzymes that digest the ingredients that would poison
the following step of biodegradation.
This biotechnology has already had several applications in different fields
such as:
• Treatment
of water from a slaughter house in Anagni;
• Treatment of solutions of phenols and non-ionic tensioactive ingredients
in the process water of regeneration of lubricant oils of VISCOLUBE (Lodi,
Milan), pilot experimentation with full scale plant under construction;
• Treatment on industrial scale by AGIPetroli of water containing MTBE in
their plant of Civitavecchia and Ortona, in Italy;
• Treatment on pilot scale by AGIPetroli of water containing MTBE and
ethylene Glycols in their plant of Gaeta, in Italy.
The three
steps on which the biotechnology is based are the following:
• To
cultivate in a hyper-baric column, the "Biocatalyst", with two types of
Marine bacteria: the photosynthetic one generating natural oxygen, and the chemiosynthetic one generating enzymes;
• To pre-digest in a bioreactor the toxic stream by means of the "Biocatalyst"
mixture, a Consortium of Marine bacteria and some balanced nutrients;
• To finally ferment the resulting solution by means of biodegrading
microorganisms.
The call
for experimentation in a demonstration plant comes from the need to select
the appropriate Consortium of bacteria from the bacteria strain collection
of Ecobios and to define the operating condition for their survival and
activity in the specific medium of the two streams.
The size of the prototype plant should be such to allow the scaling up to an
industrial plant.
Videocolor believed that a unit capable of handling 15 m3/h was the most
suited to perform the activities of this project.
Expected results
The proposed project is in line with the Videocolor and Thomson Group
environmental strategy, concerning an intensive action to minimize the
environmental impact of the products and production.
The efforts are now concentrated in recycling most of the water into the
process with the following aims:
• To limit
the use of fresh water resources by recycling as much water as possible in
agreement with the recent Italian legislation on the water resources (Legge
Galli) and the EEC guidelines;
• To reach an environmental protection level, higher than national and EU
regulations prescribed, by avoiding discharging into the river waters which,
although within the law, still add salinity;
• To reach a higher personnel safety level, by limiting the use of
potentially aggressive chemicals use in the regeneration of resin exchange
beds;
• To eliminate sludge disposal costs;
• To reduce significantly the production costs by not using the chemicals
for physical-chemical treatment
EEC
interest in the project
The proposed R&D project could be of interest for the EEC environmental
strategic lines, for the following main reasons:
• Limiting
the use of fresh water is a EU priority as proved by relevant arguments of
the LIFE program, of IV Framework R&D Program (1994-1998), Environmental and
Climate section.
• Safety and health in the working areas, and in particular the hazard
prevention, is one of main purpose of all EU and Italian regulations
concerning these subjects (EU laws 89/391, 89/654, 89/655, 89/656, 90/269,
90/270, 90/394, 90/679, Italian Decree nr. 626 dated September l9th, 1994).
Therefore the study of a biotechnology limiting the use of the aggressive
agents needed to regenerate the resins could be regarded as a significant
contribution to the EEC aims.
• This project has proved the possibility of breaking down, by bacterial
activity, polymeric organic compounds which cannot be dealt with in the
standard sewage treatment plants and which today require hard chemical
oxidation or concentration followed by incineration;
• This project could be considered as a demonstrative activity connected to
the problem of "sustainable development" thanks to the possibility of
reusing the water treated with Ecobios Biotechnology.
This
project has given a contribution to the EEC and PECO (Centre/East European
Countries) co-operation, as it concerns the development of a biotechnology
applicable both in Videocolor (Anagni) factory and in Thomson tubes
production factory in Poland. In a next large industrialization stage, the
proposed technology and also its methodological global approach can be used
also for other kinds of industrial production all over the Europe, involving
the productions of effluents containing organic polymeric chains which
cannot be treated in the sewage treatment plants, such as textile industry,
leather processing, food processing, production of electronic components,
metal cleaning, etc.
Reproducibility
Due to the presence of other firms in the Thomson Group, producing the same
kind of components in Europe and in North America, this project can be
immediately reproducible also in other geographical regions where the EU
favours the research and development of innovative technologies.
The project can also supply useful indications and can be reproducible at
least in the following industrial fields, utilizing or producing mechanical
formed parts:
• computer's
screen fabrication;
• complex instrumentation including kinescopes (as analyzers, oscilloscopes,
biomedical equipment, etc.);
• building and designing of industrial waste water treatment plant;
• public and private Companies managing industrial wastewater treatment
plant.
These
examples of industrial segments interested into the project, may have a
different scale factor because of the different size and of the different
market, but they can all lead to an implementation of its results.
Feasibility and economical interest
It is Videocolor opinion that the feasibility of Ecobios Biotechnology is
rather high based on examination of the theories involved and of a computer
modelling of the process.
The main economical benefit for Videocolor is connected to the elimination
of part of reagents for the physic-chemical treatment of the effluent water
plus those for demineralizing the fresh water from the river. This cost is
about 2,000 Lit/m3 (1.03 Euro/ m3) of water to be treated plus 1,500 Lit./m3
(0.77 Euro/Kg) of fresh water to be de-mineralized. It is equivalent to a
cost of about 2 billion Lit/year (1,032,900 Euro/year) just for the two
streams considered.
Obviously only a quota of this reagent cost can be saved because of the cost
of the proposed treatment. Estimates made on the costs resulting from the
Ecobios process , have shown that a yearly saving of about 25% in respect to
the previous situation was a reasonable forecast. This has been subsequently
verified and proved during the development of the project.
Concerning the global impact on the European TV kinescopes market, it has to
be considered that this product can be regarded as a large market product
and that Videocolor has a large portion of this market all over the world,
subdivided as follows:
Italy: 19%
France: 20%
UK.: 16%
Germany: 18%
Spain: 8%
Others*: 19%
*(East European Countries, North Africa, Middle and Far East)
Economical Benefits
An economic analysis of the costs-benefits of the biocatalysis at the varying of plant's flow
has been carried out. Additional costs, connected to
the use of the recycling biotechnology at issue, have been appraised as well
as the savings in comparison with the ordinary way of treating water.
The additional items of the costs taken into account are the following:
•
Biocatalyst consumption
• Reinstating of the bacteria lost inside the sludge or in the waters
• Nutrients consumption
• Electricity
• Amortization of the plants
The cost
for sludge disposal can be neglected due to the small quantity produced.
No additional costs for extra personnel are required because it is possible
to use that one, which is normally assigned to the traditional waste water
treatment plants of the firm.
The items of the savings in comparison with the ordinary situation are the
following:
• Water
supply (saving directly generated by recycling)
• Treatment of the effluents for the draining
• Sludge disposal of the pre-existing chemical-physical treatment process
The
estimate has been carried out especially for Videocolor situation, which is
considered as being typical. One of the parameters of comparison for the
other situations is represented by the water supply cost (approximately
1,500 Lit/m³, that is 0.77 Euro/ m³).
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