In the global campaign for water security, GEA water-conserving and water treatment solutions are driving the effort to reduce water use, waste and pollution – one factory, one farm and one city at a time.
Despite all the water on our planet, only about 0.5% is freshwater available for our consumption and use. And these days, humanity’s demands have long since exceeded natural replenishment rates. As the population surges towards 10 billion, the pressure placed on this finite supply will only increase. To make matters worse, pollution is rendering more and more of our available freshwater unusable.
The challenges vary by region. In emerging economies, the problem is primarily lack of wastewater treatment which is used to make contaminated water safe for future consumption, irrigation and return to natural waters; in higher income countries, agricultural runoff is the main source of pollution, along with industrial contaminants. So, with demand rising, the supply of usable water is actually shrinking – and getting more precious by the day.
Water efficiency gains that count
Agriculture and industry account for nearly 90% of freshwater withdrawals globally, dominating both water resource usage and contamination. Accordingly, this is where advances in water conservation can have the biggest positive impact. And there is some good news here. As farmers and industries have improved their operational efficiency over the years, water efficiency has often improved as well. In agriculture, advances in drip irrigation, soil moisture sensors and smart devices – along with the use of treated wastewater – have not only reduced water waste dramatically but also lowered water costs, improved yield quantity and quality. Better soil health and increased drought resilience are additional benefits to farmers’ bottom line.
The story is similar in industry, where water is critical to countless processes: cooling and heating, cleaning and rinsing, chemical reactions, transporting materials through pipelines and conveyors, sanitation, treating industrial waste or as an ingredient in food and beverages. Here, too, operational efficiency gains have reduced water inputs and waste per unit of production over the years. According to research carried out by American environmental scientist, Peter H. Gleick, before WWII, 60 to 100 tons of water were used to produce a ton of steel. By the early 2000’s, it was down to 6 tons per ton of steel – a tenfold improvement in water “productivity”.
Water: the new currency and potential deal-breaker
Today, the case for smart water management in industry is more compelling than ever. In many regions, water rights are already bought, traded and regulated – like a commodity or currency. Severe drought in some parts of the world have led to skyrocketing water prices and legal disputes over usage rights. Corporations and governments are investing heavily in technologies like desalination and wastewater recycling to secure a stable supply.
At the same time, the focus is shifting to groundwater as a strategic resource: Many countries are prioritizing its protection as a drinking water source, imposing high levies or denying industrial enterprises access to the water table.
Saving water is therefore not just an ethical responsibility but also an economic necessity. Those who want to remain competitive must innovate, adapt and do everything possible to reduce water consumption and become less dependent on external sources.
GEA on the front lines
As farms, companies and municipalities vie for this increasingly precious resource, the challenge will be to ensure responsible access to usable water while balancing competing demands. Success will require action on multiple fronts: raising awareness about water management, enacting policies that balance the needs of people, industries and ecosystems and developing infrastructure to ensure a reliable water supply works.
Meanwhile, today’s advanced water efficiency and treatment technologies, including many from GEA, continue to minimize freshwater withdrawals in industry and agriculture and treat wastewater to enable recovery and reuse; this takes some of the strain off our dwindling supply of usable freshwater.
From decanters and centrifuges to evaporation and desalinization technologies, membrane filtration plants, advanced cleaning and cooling solutions – to name a few – GEA machines do the hard work day-in and day-out to reduce water use, waste and pollution.
Saving freshwater in food & beverage production
Dairy processing: GEA’s Centrifuge Water Saving Unit is a compact, space-saving machine that significantly reduces the water needed for cooling centrifuges during their operation. Among other customers, it has helped a German dairy reduce freshwater consumption by 65% and SalzburgMilch, one of Austria’s leading dairies, achieve 1.26 million liters of annual water savings (equivalent to the yearly water consumption of 24, four-person households) per installed unit.
Milk powder production: At Asia’s largest skim milk powder production facility, GEA reverse osmosis technology treats condensate from the evaporation plant, allowing them to reuse 100% of the water generated during milk evaporation and achieve a nearly zero-water-discharge plant.
Bottling: GEA’s ECOSpin2 Zero aseptic filling line significantly reduces the amount of water required to rinse the bottles after sterilization, achieving water savings of up to 91%. For extended shelf-life beverages, the GEA Whitebloc Aero employs dry sterilization technology using hydrogen peroxide vapor to eliminate the need for water entirely.
Cleaning: Membrane filtration, one of the leading technologies for purifying water or isolating target ingredients in food and beverage processing, normally uses large amounts of water for its clean-in-place (CIP) cycle. An innovative digital solution from GEA optimizes flush time and water volume during CIP to reduce water consumption by up to 52% compared with conventional membrane filtration systems.
Cheese production: A cheese processing plant in Germany uses GEA’s tank flush system to save some 3 million liters of freshwater per year. While food producers who take advantage of GEA’s advanced VARICOVER system are recovering and cleaning residual product from pipelines in a way that significantly reduces the need for flushing water while minimizing food waste.
Agriculture: On the farm, GEA milking robots are proven to use up to 18% less water for rinsing in multi-robot set ups.
Safeguarding water resources through treatment
In Egypt, a consortium of four of the largest engineering companies in the Middle East have joined forces to build the world’s largest wastewater treatment plant. They chose GEA’s dewatering decanters to ensure maximum wastewater recovery for a country that meets more than 90% of its water needs from the Nile.
At a drinking water treatment plant in Indonesia, GEA’s state-of-the art centrifuges are removing the maximum amount of re-usable water from contaminated river sludge. This protects the Cisadane River from solids flowing back to the source, ensuring access to fresh, clean water for homes, businesses and farms.
In India’s Bengaluru region – known as the country’s “Silicon Valley” – the population explosion since the 1990’s resulted in the severe depletion and pollution of the area’s 183 natural lakes. Today, GEA’s environmental decanters reclaim millions of liters of water from processed sewage sludge for use as potable water or return it to the waterways.
Reducing industrial wastewater and pollution
Mining: GEA decanters, robust enough to handle the abrasive nature of the slurry waste from mines, are helping mining operations extract valuable solids from their waste (approx. 80% dry solids), separate clean water and enhance their environmental stewardship.
Aquaculture: Fish farmers are using GEA decanters to process fish manure, returning process water safely back to sea while generating extra income from selling fertilizer as a side stream.
Chemical industry: GEA evaporation technology helps chemical companies recycle and re-use condensate as process water. This solution reduces the amount of freshwater required and produces less wastewater.
Plastics recycling: Before recycled plastics can reenter the supply chain for (re)use in packaging or other products, the material must be rigorously cleaned and treated. GEA decanters separate the solids from the process water, removing all contaminants from the water circuit during cleaning. This means much of the water and cleaning agents can be redirected back to the process and the solids ejected and safely disposed of.
And the list goes on. For example, GEA’s SeaWaterDistiller uses waste heat from ship engines to generate up to 30 tons of fresh water a day for use on container ships, LNG tankers and freighters at sea. And for yet another way to extract value from wastewater, GEA heat pump technology has enabled municipalities to capture heat from their wastewater as a source of low-carbon district heating. And GEA desalination plants turn salty seawater into potable water for communities in arid regions where freshwater is scarce or inaccessible.
More innovation needed in response to the water crisis
In many ways, the work of GEA’s water-saving champions is just beginning. According to the UN, only about a quarter of industrial wastewater is treated; 42% of household wastewater is not properly treated, and the “health and livelihoods of 4.8 billion people could be at risk if current water quality monitoring is not improved” – to name a few sobering figures. Moreover, there remains huge untapped potential for wastewater reuse.
For GEA this means redoubling our efforts to continuously innovate to improve water efficiency. Our Add Better ecolabel – created as a way to help customers identify our latest efficiency improvements – embodies this spirit of continuous innovation.
Add Better solutions sold in 2023 alone will save nearly 5 million tons of CO2 emissions over their life cycle and save 16.4 million cubic meters of water at customers’ premises. By 2030, GEA aims to increase the share of sustainable products and solutions in its turnover to more than 60%. Furthermore, GEA will offer all its solutions with a zero freshwater-use option by 2030, achieving a significant milestone for its customers, the communities they serve, and the planet.