Toward sustainability

Today, many areas of the world are experiencing significant level of water stress where the competing demands of municipal drinking water, irrigation water, and industrial use of water are creating issues that need to be addressed. Veolia is promoting the use of a Water Impact Index similar to the Carbon Footprint as a method of qualifying the impact of water projects. This Water Impact Index takes into account the volumes and the qualities of water extracted and released along with the local hydrological context or water stress conditions. For many, the most critical aspect is the water stress situation requires an increased production of useable water from the limited water supply, while maintaining a reasonable cost of water. Evaporation and crystallization technologies have been available for a long time, but the costs of the evaporation and crystallization process are not insignificant, and there is a need to address how to concentrate water at a lower overall cost. This has led to a number of alternative approaches to the solution of the water recovery issue. New processes along with combinations of processes have been developed utilizing both the pressure-driven and electrically-driven membranes to achieve substantially higher recovery of water, while avoiding scaling and fouling issues.