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USGS1956

Water requirements of the carbon-black industry

Carbon blacks include an important group of industrial carbons used chiefly as a reinforcing agent in rubber tires. In 1953 more than 1,610 million pounds of carbon black was produced, of which approximately 1,134 million pounds was consumed by the rubber industry. The carbon-black industry uses small quantities of water as compared to some industries; however, the water requirements of the industry are important because of the dependence of the rubber-tire industry on carbon black. Two methods are used in the manufacture of carbon black - contact and furnace. The only process use of water in the contact method is that used in pelleting. Water is used also in the plant washhouse and for cleaning, and sometimes the company camp may be supplied by the plant. A survey made during the last quarter of 1953 showed that the average values of unit water use at contact plants for process use, all plant uses, and all uses including company camps are 0.08, 0.14, and 0.98 gallon of water per pound of carbon black respectively. In addition to use in wet pelleting, large quantities of water are required in continuous and cyclic furnace methods to reduce the temperature of the gases of decomposition in order to separate and collect the entrained carbon black. The 22 furnace plants in operation in 1953 used a total of 12.4 million gallons per day for process use. Four furnace plants generate electric power for plant use; condenser-cooling water for one such plant may nearly equal the requirements of the entire industry for process use. The average values of unit water use at furnace plants for process use, all plant uses and all uses including company camps but excluding power generation are 3.26, 3.34, and 3.45 gallons of water per pound of carbon black respectively. Carbon-black plants in remote, sparsely settled areas often must maintain company camps for employees. Twenty-one of twenty-seven contact plants surveyed in 1953 had company camps. These camps used large quantities of water: 0.84 gallon per pound of carbon black as compared to 0.14 gallon per pound used in the plants. Furnace plants can generally be located near a labor supply and, therefore, do not require company camps. Ten of the twenty-two furnace plants surveyed in 1953 had company camps. Because water used for pelleting and gas quenching is evaporated, leaving the dissolved minerals in the product as objectionable impurities, particular attention was paid to the quality of water available for use at the plants visited during the 1953 survey. Reports of chemical analyses of water samples were obtained at 23 plants. A study of these reports does not develop a pattern of the limits of tolerance of dissolved solids in water used in process or of the need for water treatment based on geographical location of the plant. However these analyses show that water used for quenching contains less dissolved solids than water used by the industry for any other purpose. Based on trends in the industry it is expected that the quantity of water used by the carbon-black industry will increase more rapidly than will the quantity of carbon black produced because of the increasing percentage produced in furnace plants, and that selection of sites for modern furnace plants will be influenced more by quantity and quality of the available water supply than was the case in selecting sites for contact plants for which low-cost natural gas was the primary consideration.

Water Supply Paper↗
USGS1956

Water requirements of the aluminum industry

Aluminum is unique among metals in the way it is obtained from its ore. The first step is to produce alumina, a white powder that bears no resemblance to the bauxite from which it is derived or to the metallic aluminum to which it is reduced by electrolytic action in a second step. Each step requires a complete plant facility, and the plants may be adjacent or separated by as much as the width of the North American continent. Field investigations sf every alumina plant and reduction works in the United States were undertaken to determine the industry's water use. Detailed studies were made of process and plant layout so that a water balance could be made for each plant to determine not only the gross water intake but also an approximation of the consumptive use of water. Water requirements of alumina plants range from 0.28 to 1.10 gallons per pound of alumina; the average for the industry is 0.66 gallon. Water requirements of reduction works vary considerably more, ranging from 1.24 to 36.33 gallons per pound of aluminum, and average 14.62 gallons. All alumina plants in the United States derive alumina from bauxite by the Bayer process or by the Combination process, a modification of the Bayer process. Although the chemical process for obtaining alumina from bauxite is essentially the same at all plants, different procedures are employed to cool the sodium aluminate solution before it enters the precipitating tanks and to concentrate it by evaporation of some of the water in the solution. Where this evaporation takes place in a cooling tower, water in the solution is lost to the atmosphere as water vapor and so is used consumptively. In other plants, the quantity of solution in the system is controlled by evaporation in a multiple-effect evaporator where practically all vapor distilled out of the solution is condensed to water that may be reused. The latter method is used in all recently constructed alumina plants, and some older plants are replacing cooling towers with multiple-effect evaporators. All reduction works in the United States use the Hall process, but the variation in water requirements is even greater than the variation at alumina plants, and, further, the total daily water requirement for all reduction works is more than 9 times the total daily requirement of all alumina plants. Many reduction works use gas scrubbers, but some do not. As gas scrubbing is one of the principal water uses in reduction works, the manner in which wash water is used, cooled, and reused accounts in large measure for the variation in water requirements. Although the supply of water for all plants but one was reported by the management to be ample for all plant needs, the economic factor of the cost of water differs considerably among plants. It is this factor that accounts in large measure for the widely divergent slant practices. Plant capacity alone has so little effect on plant water requirements that other conditions such as plant operation based on the cost of water, plant location, and the need for conservation of water mask any economy inherent in plant size.

Water Supply Paper↗
USGS1961

Water requirements of the copper industry

The copper industry in 1955 used about 330 million gallons of water per day in the mining and manufacturing of primary copper. This amount is about 0.3 percent of the total estimated withdrawals of industrial water in the United States in 1955. These facts were determined by a survey, in 1956, of the amount and chemical quality of the water used by the copper industry. A large part of this water was used in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, where about five-sixths of the domestic copper is mined. Much of the remaining water use was near New York City where most of the electrolytic refineries are located, and the rest of the water was used in widely scattered places. A little more than 100,000 gallons of water per ton of copper was used in the production of copper from domestic ores. Of this amount about 70,000 gallons per ton was used in mining and concentrating the ore, and about 30,000 gallons per ton was used to reduce the concentrate to refined copper. In areas where water was scarce or expensive, the unit water use was a little more than half the average. About 60 mgd (million gallons per day) or 18 percent of the water was used consumptively, and nearly all of the consumptive use occurred in the water-short areas of the West. Of the water used in mining and manufacturing primary copper 75 percent was surface water and 25 percent was ground water, 89 percent of this water was self-supplied by the copper companies and 11 percent came from public supplies. Much of the water used in producing primary copper was of comparatively poor quality; about 46 percent was saline containing 1,000 ppm (parts per million) or more of dissolved solids and 54 percent was fresh. Water that is used for concentration of copper ores by flotation or even any water that comes in contact with the ore at any time before it reaches the flotation plant must be free of petroleum products because they interfere with the flotation process. The water used in mining and ore concentration was higher in dissolved solids and was harder than the water used in smelting and refining. Water used in mining and ore concentration had a median dissolved solids content of about 400 ppm and a median hardness (as CaCO 3 ) of about 200 ppm. The median values for water used in smelting and refining were only half these amounts.

Water Supply Paper↗
USGS1964

Water requirements of the petroleum refining industry

About 3,500 million gallons of water was withdrawn daily in 1955 for use by petroleum refineries in the United States. This was about 3 percent of the estimated daily withdrawal of industrial water in the United States in 1955. An average of 468 gallons of water was required to refine a barrel of crude oil, and the median was 95 gallons of water per barrel of crude charge; withdrawals ranged from 6.5 to 3,240 gallons per barrel. Ninety-one percent of the water requirements of the petroleum refineries surveyed was for cooling. One-third of the refineries reused their cooling water from 10 to more than 50 times. Only 17 refineries used once-through cooling systems. Refineries with recirculating cooling systems circulated about twice as much cooling water but needed about 25 times less makeup; however, they consumed about 24 times more water per barrel of charge than refineries using once-through cooling systems. The average noncracking refinery used about 375 gallons of water per barrel of crude, which is less than the 471-gallon average of refineries with cracking facilities. Refineries are composed of various processing units, and the water requirements of such units varied ; median makeup needs ranged from about 125 gallons per barrel for polymerization and alkylation units to 15.5 gallons per barrel for distillation units. Refinery-owned sources of water supplied 95 percent of the makeup-water requirements. Surface-water sources provided 86 percent of the makeup-water demand. Less than 1 percent of the makeup water was obtained from reprocessed municipal sewage.

Water Supply Paper↗