Balanço hídrico reconciliado como uma ferramenta para a gestão estratégica de recursos hídricos em uma indústria de agroquímicos

Abstract

The objective of this study was to strategically evaluate the water management in an industry from the agrochemical sector through the construction of a reconciled water balance (RWB). The methodology developed by the Clean Technologies Network (TECLIM) was used, and improvements with a Cleaner Production (P+L) approach were proposed. The construction of the water balance was made from technical visits and surveys of information with local operators and engineers. The control volume was chosen to be the entire industrial area of the company from June to October 2020. Next, the block diagrams and spreadsheet were constructed with the data collected from water flows to carry out reconciliation using the information quality scale (IQ). Ninety-eight (98) water streams were quantified. It was possible to zero the difference between the water inflows and outflows in the entire company and each block from the reconciliation. With the reconciled data, environmental indicators were proposed, including the water footprint (WF). The primary water consumers were identified, being the use of water as raw material in the production process the responsible for the consumption of 3.21 t/h; cleaning and decontamination of industrial areas consuming around 0.96 t/h; and the cooling towers with a consumption of 0.96 t/h of water. Due to their unreliability, the main streams to be more carefully observed were found, i.e., the effluent streams sent to co-processing, classified as unreliable information (URI) in the IQ scale. The value of 0.62 m³ of water for each ton of produced product was calculated, being about 77% lower than the WF of companies in the Brazilian chemical sector. Thus, it could be concluded that using the RWB was of great value, making it possible to identify the points of most significant water consumption and critical in measurement controls. Through the proposed improvements, water savings of 1.52 m³ per hour will be possible using recycled water in the processes.