Operational and Environmental Consequences of Large Industrial Cooling Water Systems

Industrial and economic development of mankind has always depended on the availability of water. Industries resort to large-scale abstraction of cooling water from natural water bodies such as rivers, lakes and coastal seas. The abstracted water is treated with chemicals to combat operational problems like biofouling and corrosion. Such withdrawal and subsequent discharge of large amounts of water have the potential to have an impact on the ecology of the recipient water body. Previously, there have been a few attempts to address the operational issues with primary emphasis on biofouling and its control. Likewise, there have been a few attempts to highlight the environmental issues arising out of cooling water abstraction and discharge. However, there have been no attempts to comprehensively address the operational and environmental issues together, although they happen to be two sides of the same coin. This book is an attempt to integrate these two aspects and present the state-of-art knowledge.