What is water treatment?

UNDERSTANDING THE USES OF WATER TREATMENT
Water treatment is used to optimize most water-based industrial processes, such as: heating, cooling, processing, cleaning, and rinsing, so that operating costs and risks are reduced. Poor water treatment lets water interact with the surfaces of pipes and vessels which contain it. Steam boilers can scale up or corrode, and these deposits will mean more fuel is needed to heat the same amount of water.

Cooling towers can also scale up and corrode, but left untreated, the warm, dirty water they can contain will encourage bacteria to grow, and Legionnaires' Disease can be the fatal consequence. Also, water treatment is used to improve the quality of water contacting the manufactured product e.g. semiconductors, and/or can be part of the product e.g. beverages, pharmaceuticals, etc. In these instances, poor water treatment can cause defective products. Domestic water can become unsafe to drink if proper hygiene measures are neglected.

In many cases, effluent water from one process might be perfectly suitable for reuse in another process somewhere else on site. With the proper treatment, a significant proportion of industrial on-site wastewater might be reusable. This can save money in three ways: lower charges for lower water consumption, lower charges for the smaller volume of effluent water discharged and lower energy costs due to the recovery of heat in recycled wastewater.