Water is an essential resource for many industries, but it faces various challenges that threaten its availability. How can digital technology contribute to enhancing water sustainability?
Industries worldwide utilize water for a variety of purposes such as manufacturing, processing, cleaning, diluting, irrigating, cooling, and transporting goods.
The amount of water used is substantial across sectors including mining, smelting, petroleum refining, chemical production, and food processing.
For instance, the apparel industry alone consumes around 79 billion cubic meters of water annually, which is enough to fill 32 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
This consumption is projected to increase by 50% by 2030. In the mining and metals industry, the water required to produce a ton of steel (250,000 liters) is equivalent to more than 2 years of consumption for a European family.
Consequently, water sustainability has become a critical concern for driving global economic development.
The high demand for water and its diminishing supply pose challenges related to quality, pollution, climate change, urbanization, aging infrastructure, rising energy costs, and evolving regulations within the global water sector.
Within their internal operations, water and wastewater facilities encounter issues such as water leakages and high energy consumption rates.
In the United States alone, municipal wastewater treatment plants are estimated to consume over 30 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, amounting to approximately $2 billion in electric costs.
A strategy for water sustainability relies on infrastructure that facilitates the transparent collection of performance data from the physical systems supporting core operations.
In the water and wastewater sector, this involves ensuring transparency in water processing and distribution networks, as well as tracing water assets as they move through municipal systems.
Achieving transparency requires the implementation of data collection and monitoring systems.
Source Schneider Electric
