Artemis Water Strategy

Water resilience for a thirsty future

Jan 09 2017

Dow Water’s Path to the Circular Economy

gms-mexico-plant-from-dow-study
Is water the natural starting point for the circular economy?

Eliminating waste is one of the magical overlaps between business and the environment. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, circular supply chains that increase the rate of recycling, reuse and remanufacturing could generate more than $1 trillion a year by 2025. Moving from a linear economy, where raw materials are used once and thrown away, to a circular economy where inputs are reused and waste eliminated, is a long-term economic imperative if we are to support a world population of nine billion.

Dow Water is among the first industry incumbents to plot a market strategy aimed at the circular economy. It is offering an alternative to Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) solutions, that it calls “minimal liquid discharge” (MLD).  MLD is a toolbox of products and proprietary system designs that Dow claims deliver low-risk benefits today and incrementally while building toward the long-term promise of the circular economy. “In a perfect world, industry could reclaim and reuse 100% of the wastewater it produces. But in the real world, many companies find that this goal.. is costly and difficult to achieve,” notes Snehal Desai, Dow Water’s Global Business Director.

Real world alternative to the holy grail of ZLD?

For decades, policy leaders have touted zero liquid discharge (ZLD) as a cornerstone for forward-looking water projects, from gargantuan Chinese desalination facilities to new manufacturing sites in Island Nations and US power plants. As water becomes scarce and disposal costs skyrocket, manufacturers see the immediate value of decreasing waste. However, moving real-world operations toward zero waste isn’t an overnight event. “If there was ever a Holy Grail of water recovery and reuse in an industrial plant, then it is undoubtedly … ZLD,” wrote industry pundit Gord Cope in 2009. “While it may be difficult and expensive to achieve, zero liquid discharge is easy to define.” Eight years later, analysts continue to project a future market for $100M – $200M annual revenues on the horizon.  Although ZLD holds great promise to reduce water pollution and augment water supply, its viability is determined by a balance among the benefits associated with ZLD, energy consumption, and capital/operation costs,” membrane experts Tiezheng Tong and Menachem Elimelech of Yale University noted in a recent survey of leading-edge low-energy membrane solutions.

costcomparison“Discharge mitigation efforts don’t need to be an all or nothing proposition,” explains Desai.  By combining state-of-the-art equipment and proprietary systems design, Dow claims that it can provide 95% of the benefit of ZLD at less than half the cost. In choosing its strategy to help customers shift operations, Dow is leveraging more than its product technologies, drawing on decades of experience with diverse operations around the globe.  Moving from a model of “selling stuff” to a model of selling performance reflects the vision of the circular economy.  Dow is aligning itself with the long-term strategy of many of the world’s leading manufacturers to reduce risk in their supply chain driven by circular economy initiatives by the World Economic Forum and other business leadership collaboratives.

Case study: General Motors’ San Luis Potosi, Mexico Assembly Plant

One early case study is the General Motors (GM) vehicle assembly plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico (about 400 km northwest of Mexico City), which opened in 2008. The plant, which has an annual capacity of 160,000 cars, is located in an arid, remote area with no receiving stream or municipal sewer available to discharge wastewater. Through a combination of reverse osmosis (RO) technology, a proprietary high-rate chemical softening process, and other technologies, the plant can convert up to 90% of its tertiary wastewater into reusable water, leaving less than 10 percent of liquid waste for discharge into adjacent solar ponds for evaporation.

Collaborative economics of water at community scale– a new challenge for global giants

Desai sees scarcity and regulation driving new models for water management.  “There are new economics for water that are driving an innovation revolution, not just focused on products and technology, but a fresh take on how businesses, governments, and other stakeholders work together,” Desai explains.  “Collaboration can help drive advancements in technology and new methods for valuing natural capital.” For example, the Dow Terneuzen site in the Netherlands is the city’s largest employer and heaviest industrial water user. Dow collaborated with the municipal water board and a local water company to implement an innovative wastewater recycling program that uses every liter of water three times, instead of just once. As a result, the plant has reduced the energy use associated with water treatment by 95 percent– the equivalent of reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 60,000 tons each year.

“Since water is the single most important shared resource across all supply chains, and wastewater is the largest untapped waste category—as big as all solid-waste categories taken together—it is the natural starting point for the circular revolution,” writes Martin Stuchtey, Managing Partner at SystemIQ and author of the A Good Disruption: Redefining Growth in the Twenty-First Century. “Water is a powerful driver of yield in almost any industrial process and the extraction of raw materials…taken together, these advantages can turn water into a major value driver,” Stuchtey notes.

With a vast global presence in water operations and a parent company that is one the world’s biggest manufacturers, Dow Water has a unique view of market drivers for new water equipment.  MLD’s approach and its early results are worth watching.  Join us at the Cleantech Forum’s Water Summit to hear more from Dow Water’s Senior R&D Manager, Abhishek Shrivastava.  See more useful resources on the circular economy below.

circular_economy_diagram_foundation_feb2015-01_cqrtnr

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Resources on the Circular Economy:

  • “From linear to circular-Accelerating a proven concept.” Towards the circular economy. Accessed January 07, 2017. http://reports.weforum.org/toward-the-circular-economy-accelerating-the-scale-up-across-global-supply-chains/from-linear-to-circular-accelerating-a-proven-concept/.
  • Stuchtey, Martin. “Rethinking the water cycle.” McKinsey & Company. May 15, 2015. Accessed January 07, 2017. http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/rethinking-the-water-cycle.
  • Stuchtey, Martin R., Per-Anders Enkvist, and Klaus Zumwinkel. A good disruption: redefining growth in the twenty-first century. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
  • WorldEconomicForum. “Ellen MacArthur | The Circular Economy Imperative.” YouTube. February 19, 2016. Accessed January 07, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZFNvrnO4E.

Images: Top and Middle courtesy of Dow Water 

Written by Laura Shenkar · Categorized: Circular economy, Corporate Sustainability · Tagged: circular econony, Dow, water reuse, ZLD

Jun 22 2015

Water is Critical for the “Once-in-a-Generation” US Energy Opportunity

Water management will be critical to the US to realize the “once-in-a-generation opportunity” brought by innovations in unconventional oil and gas production,” according to a new report by Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting Group America’s Unconventional Energy Opportunity. read more…

Written by Laura Shenkar · Categorized: Corporate Sustainability, On-site Water Treatment, Shale Gas, Water Policy Innovaton · Tagged: boston consulting group, fracking, hydraulic fracturing, michael porter, Oil and gas, wastewater, water innovation

Mar 27 2015

Will Apple’s Lisa Jackson Set the Pace for Sustainable Water?

Apple's new campus in Cupertino, CA, Courtesy of City of Cupertino
Apple’s new campus in Cupertino, CA, Courtesy of City of Cupertino

Apple extended its leadership in sustainable water on Tuesday when Santa Clara Valley Water District voted to approve a $17.5 million project that will channel more recycled water to the parched South Bay. While the company will only use 3% of the recycled water delivered through the pipeline, it is covering $4.8M of the $17.0 M project. Like many cities in California, Santa Clara is already producing reclaimed water in a plant built many years ago, but its been stumped by the costs of delivering water to users. A majority of the $17.0 M will go toward a 13,300 foot pipeline.  On average, building new pipelines from big water plants to water users like the Apple campus cost between $1.0M – $2.0M per mile.

Reclaiming sewage for non-drinking water uses— toilets, outside landscape irrigation and golf courses– saves precious freshwater. About 40% of water used on corporate campuses like Apple’s is for toilet flushing and another 20% is used for outdoor landscaping.  Distributed water reclaim systems eliminate the costs of pipelines, but regulation makes these systems expensive.  The high costs of piping recycled water from centralized plants is driving states like California to examine how advanced water solutions can ensure safe treatment for waste water in distributed systems close to places like the Apple Campus.

Its exciting to see Apple extend its environmental leadership beyond clean energy into water. In driving new approaches, Apple’s Vice President of Environmental Initiatives Lisa Jackson brings unique qualifications. As the former head of the USEPA, Jackson understands the value of tech-driven water solutions, such as onsite water reclaim.

Written by Laura Shenkar · Categorized: Corporate Sustainability, On-site Water Treatment, Water Policy Innovaton

Jun 09 2014

Energy Microgrids in a Thirsty World

Hunters Point Microgrid ProjectEven today, when businesses operate as if water is cheap and abundant, water tech solutions provide strategic value within mission-critical facilities. Artemis has been looking at how water management fits into the microgrid paradigm, and how the microgrid might drive widespread adoption of smart onsite water tech solutions.

Energy microgrids bring together leading edge technologies for generating energy, storing it onsite and balancing energy delivery with power use to create small scale power networks that can operate independently of the main power grid.  Initial pilots are showing microgrids that are so reliable that they might provide a  new distributed energy utility infrastructure that is smarter, cleaner, and more resilient.

Water is an integral issue in designing microgrids, and water scarcity will be a major driver for microgrids.

Decentralized water solutions that use onsite renewable energy for power build a water microgrid that is efficient and resilient.  Even amidst urban water infrastructures, onsite water management can save up to 90% of the potable water used to run a retail operation, and 80% of the emissions associated with that water.

A waste water plant, like the Southeast Treatment Plant located at Hunters Point,  can “tri-generate” power:  electricity (for plant operation), heat (for digestion), and hydrogen (for transportation).  In addition to established solutions that use biogas, a new breed of energy harvesters include microbial fuel cell solutions like those from Cambrian Innovation and Emefcy.  These solutions produce energy as well as reclaimed water for irrigation, cooling, and recharging wells.  In addition, a host of companies, see Clean Water Technology and Watertectonics offer new efficient approaches to treating sewage onsite and generating reclaimed water.

Managing energy use in water treatment plants optimizes energy grid performance. One promising water tech solution is Enbala. Watch for a wave of microgrid projects as droughts in the US and worldwide cripple the thermoelectric energy plants that power the centralized energy grid today. By using renewable and 24/7 baseload fuel cell power generation, microgrids can eliminate water requirements for cooling thermoelectric power plants.

Written by Laura Shenkar · Categorized: Corporate Efficiency, Corporate Sustainability, Resilience

Feb 25 2011

What You Need to Know about the Blue Business Revolution

The risk of water shortages to business was first identified three years ago at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Since then, leading investors in the major businesses worldwide have been highlighting the risk that water scarcity poses to operations—not just in the third world through supply chains, but also in key markets in the developed world. Water scarcity and infrastructure breakdown has reached a point where they threaten semi-conductor fabrication and soda manufacturing in Atlanta as much as in India.

[Read more…]

Written by Laura Shenkar · Categorized: Commentary, Corporate Efficiency, Corporate Sustainability, Trends · Tagged: blue business, blue revolution, corporate risk, industry trends, water efficiency

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