Ecological Technologies for Industrial Wastewater Management ─ Petrochemicals, Metals, Semi-Conductors, and Paper Industries

Water is essential to our planet’s life, and protecting our water resources is a prerequisite for building a sustainable future. Since water use is inextricably linked to energy use, however, we face significant challenges. Water plays an essential role in many, if not most, manufacturing facilities. In a world facing a water-scarcity crisis, much research and development currently focuses on decreasing industries’ water-use footprint.

This compendium volume looks briefly at several select industries and investigates various water treatment processes for each, including microbial biotechnologies, ozone-related processes, adsorption, and photochemical reactions, among others. The various industries are organized into four groups:

• Industries that produce petrochemicals
• Metal industries
• The semi-conductor industry
• The paper and pulp industries

Collected by a well-respected expert in the field, the studies gathered here are intended to be a starting point for further investigation by graduate students and other scientific researchers. Today's research, found in these chapters, can be expanded to create tomorrow's even wider frame of study.

Professor Victor Monsalvo is an environmental scientist with a PhD in chemical engineering from the University Autonoma de Madrid, where he later became a professor in the chemical engineering section. As a researcher, he has worked with the following universities: Leeds, Cranfield, Sydney, and Aachen. He took part in an active research team working in areas of environmental technologies, water recycling, and advanced water treatment systems. He has been involved in sixteen research projects sponsored by various entities. He has led nine research projects with private companies and an R&D national project, coauthored two patents (national and international) and a book, edited two books, and written around fifty journal and referred conference papers. He has given two key notes in international conferences and has been a member of the organizing committee of five national and international conferences, workshops, and summer schools. He is currently working as senior researcher in the Chemical Processes Department at Abengoa Research, Abengoa, Seville, Spain.