Drivers and economic aspects for the implementation of advanced wastewater treatment and water reuse in a PVC plant

This paper shows the economic feasibility of water reuse within a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant. A two-step treatment of the current primary effluent consisting of an aerobic membrane bioreactor followed by a double pass reverse osmosis process, validated at pilot scale, was used to estimate the costs of the industrial water treatment plant. The economic feasibility of the treatment and reuse concept remained unclear because the required investment of 2.5M€ was high and the discounted payback time of 5 years was long.