This edition of Futuris explores how new technologies can help recycle the water used in chemical plants to make these more environmentally friendly.<br /><br /> Producing chemicals and plastics indeed requires a lot of fresh water to cool down industrial processes, and this water is not always handy.<br /><br /> Our reporter Denis Loctier visited a Dow Benelux plastics plant on the southern coast of the Netherlands. This seaside plant cannot pump water from the ground: it must buy it from a supplier located dozens of kilometers away, uses it once and then pours it out into the sea.<br /><br /> “We need approximately 20 million cubes annually of fresh water. And that’s a bit of a problem here, because the whole area is actually connected to the sea, and all the ground water is brackish or salty, even,” said Niels Groot, water specialist at Dow Benelux.<br /><br /> Salty or dirty water can damage installations, and for now it is cheaper for companies to buy fresh water than to recycle it. A European research project – called
