Water in the Circular Economy – Plenary Session

In this inaugural year for the Industrial Wastewater Management and Water Reuse Topical Conference, we have chosen the topic of Water in the Circular Economy for our plenary session. The session will include presentations by three preeminent experts in the field of water and wastewater reuse, followed by a panel discussion featuring all three speakers.

Dr. Nancy Love will present on the topic of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) for environmental impacts and how they can be used to assess and inform discussions on water systems using a holistic perspective.

Dr. Jaehong Kim will discuss opportunities and challenges for industrial water treatment and reuse from his perspective as a member of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) which is a research hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. NAWI’s focus is on early-stage research on desalination and associated water-treatment technologies to secure affordable and energy-efficient water supplies for the United States from nontraditional water sources. A crucial component of NAWI’s five-year research program is an annual road mapping effort designed to engage stakeholders in the water-use and treatment community and inform an annual requests-for-proposal process. This talk will summarize NAWI’s roadmap on industrial water treatment and reuse, with special focus on areas of research interest in six industry sectors, food and beverages, primary metals, pulp and paper, oil refineries, chemicals, and data centers and campuses. The talk will also present an example case study on a specific plant with detailed analysis on how modification of water treatment processes can enhance the energy efficiency and lower the levelized cost of water.

Dr. Joseph B. Powell will round out the presentations with a talk on “Energy, Chemicals, and Water.” Climate change and circularity are key issues to address in Energy and Chemicals. Doing so will require an unprecedented rate of change in global systems. The varied impacts and demands on water will be examined for some of the key options and scenarios in development to address these grand challenges in sustainability.

We invite you to participate in this timely discussion.