With only 2.5% of the Earth's water being non saltwater and a strong world population growth, Humain Beings today are faced with the tough challenge of managing a valuable and scarce resource: Water.

International water protection has resulted in very strong environmental awareness and as a direct consequence, there are more regulations on the use and discharge of industrial water.

In light of this, new creative technological solutions combined with a water pinch approach should bring great benefits to customers in the whole water cycle management of industrial processes.

Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) applies to waste stream, therefore any additional production costs is a burden to producers.

GEA Kestner designs fractionated crystallization systems in order to recover up to boiler grade water and value by-products from waste materials.

GEA Kestner offers a wide range of tailor made integrated evaporation and crystallization solutions.

Since most liquid effluents are generally diluted between 2 and 6%w/w total dissolved solids, the first step is preconcentration in an evaporator followed by crystallization. Depending on the nature of chemicals and whether a little purge is allowed, such combination can be sufficient. For a genuine ZLD process, a third step finisher crystallizer heated with live steam can be added.

Depending on energy availability and price GEA Kestner will propose the best available technology. Very frequently, ZLD plants utilizes Mechanical Vapour Recompression (MVR). The benefits of MVR are low energy consumption, reduced footprint, simple to use, low number of operators and high availability. A MVR evaporation plant is almost an independent system that will mainly require electrical power. Small boiler or waste steam is required for start-up, but cooling tower need can be avoided reducing the overall investment.

Condensate produce can be boiler grade if a scrubber is installed. A wide range of material of constructions can be used, ranging from Titanium, Duplex or Superduplex, Monel, FRP or Reinforced Fluoropolymers, etc.

With many references worldwide, we deal with ZLD projects for the following applications: