Västervik: How to recycle three million litres of water

Water is the very life force of our planet. The origins of the oceans, seas and rivers that cover the vast majority of the surface area of our planet go back nearly 4 billion years to a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. During this time, planet earth was the subject of a constant barrage of icy meteors, asteroids, and comets, which deposited water directly on its surface. Some theories claim that there are even greater volumes of water hidden below the ground, inaccessible to the eight billion inhabitants of our increasingly thirsty planet.Despite such a seeming abundance of water resources, water scarcity remains one of themost pressing challenges of our time. With this problem set to be further exacerbated by climate change, using and reusing water in the most efficient way possible will form a central part of efforts to address this crisis and ensure continuity of supply. While water is critical to the survival of the human species, the same also applies to a broad range of highly water intensive industrial segments, of which surface coatings is just one example.

The Industrials division of Axalta continues to go to significant lengths to leave a positive impact on the planet by using natural resource in the most responsible and sustainable way possible. Here, we examine how one of its manufacturing sites is working to reduce waste by reusing wastewater from its manufacturing process.

The solution

At this point, the team was using significant quantities of water to clean containers and vessels used during the manufacturing process and recognised that it would be preferable to prevent this water from going to waste. In practice, the site was using 5.3 cubic metres of water on a weekly basis. Rather than disposing of this water in a way that does not allow it to be reused, water is passed through an evaporator system, whereheat is applied to the point of evaporation. This vapour is then cooled and condensed to a condensate, leaving behind a collection of substances that have not evaporated, and which are no longer required, for instance, salts and other waste substances with a high boiling point. The remaining water is then ready to be used again, having been cleared ofall waste products.One of the challenges that the project encountered was around maintaining optimal conditions for storing the water. Without this being done, there is a risk of water becoming putrid due to the presence of bacteria, requiring the team to periodically introduce chemicals to prevent this from happening. The storage facility was also subjected to an intensive cleaning process once every year to maintain sanitary conditions. This was delivered in partnership with a specialist waste solutions provider, which also helps to dispose of any hazardous by-products from the cleaning process.

The challenge

Established more than 50 years ago, the manufacturing facility in Västervik in Sweden produces powder coatings for a variety of industries. The site currently employs around 100 people, 80 of whom are directly involved in manufacturing operations, with the remainder working in diverse functions such as sales, technology and general administration. The site produces the full range of Axalta powder coatings, specialising insmall batch production for its international customer base. Producing these quantities reflects the demands of the market, which tends to prefer to buy products to order, typically receiving them within five days to support just in time operations.In 2007, the team at Västervik recognised that it was producing large amounts of wastewater, a situation that was unsatisfactory from both a sustainability and cost perspective.

The outcome

The environmental impact of this project has been nothing short of spectacular. In the 16years since installation, this initiative has helped recycle around 4,300 litres of water on a weekly basis. To put this into perspective, this translates into a water saving of 206,000litres per annum, equating to an impressive 3,3 million litres of water savings!In 2022, the site produced 5,300 tonnes of powder coatings and thanks to this pioneeringuse of water recycling technology, only consumed a miniscule 1 litre of water during the cleaning process per one tonne of produced product. So while some additional water usage is still necessary, this initiative has brought the Västervik production facility incredibly close to becoming a net neutral water consumer. With continued investment inevaporation and purification technologies, it may be able to reduce this gap even further.

Cecilia Karlberg said: Axalta said: “As the impact of climate change becomes clearer by the day, it is incumbent on us to take every conceivable measure to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and to conserve natural resources in a responsible and sustainable manner. Here is a great example of a long-term initiative that has yielded massive results.“This is just a microcosm of what we are doing as a business to ensure our legacy on the planet is a positive one. Given the scale of the environmental challenge we are facing, we must become more creative and collaborative than ever before to find solutions, working together to put them into practice. Powder coatings produced at this site are inherently more sustainable than their liquid counterparts, which in turn enables our customers to become more sustainable. The fact that our process for producing such solutions is more environmentally friendly should provide further reassurance of our sustainability credentials, both on a product level and as a business, something we believe will resonate with our increasingly sustainability minded customer base.”