ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the scope for minimizing the flow of fresh water and reducing the generation of wastewater at Silchrome Plating LTD (SPL), Leeds, UK, using the water cascade analysis (WCA) tool developed by Manan et al. (2006). Wastewater at SPL normally contains toxins such as cyanide, copper, hexavalent chromium, nickel, silver and zinc. Wastewater is analyzed hourly for these toxins Monday to Friday while biological oxygen demand (BOD) is externally analyzed fortnightly. BOD is thus used in this work to determine the level of contaminants in the water. It is worth noting that when the BOD has been high the demand for fresh water has also been high at SPL. Water purity intervals and water reduction targets were set using BOD to determine contamination levels and a numerical analysis such as employed by Manan et al. (2006) on a Malaysian mosque and Nyamayedenga and Mujtaba (2014) on an African winery was carried out for the data collected at SPL. A model was developed to determine the optimum supply volume of fresh water to maintain purity within established parameters. Sensitivity analysis was then carried out to investigate the system response experimentally. Water streams were redesigned, redirected, and retrofitted according to the findings of both modeling and experimental analysis, with a resulting reduction in freshwater flow and wastewater generation at SPL of (52.45%) and (50.5%) respectively.
