On the use of graphical analysis for the design of batch water networks

This paper presents a series of graphical analyses for the design of batch water networks to process systems characterized by fixed flow rate operations. Water integration is carried out by exploiting all water reuse opportunities, with which both freshwater consumption and wastewater generation can be reduced at the same time. Throughout the analyzing procedure, the minimum freshwater consumption is first identified. Under the already set freshwater target, the follow-up analyses are continued to cut down the number of storage tanks for the simplification of the network complexity. The resultant network structure is finally obtained with the corresponding storage policy. After water integration to the literature case study, more than 54 and 63% of savings in freshwater, with more than 61 and 72% of reductions in wastewater are reported for the single and cyclic batch productions, respectively, compared to the base case without water reuse.