Browsing by Author "Webb, D. Patrick"

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    Capability evaluation of real-time inline COD detection technique for dynamic water footprint management in the beverage manufacturing industry
    (Elsevier, 2023-06-20) Cui, Xinyue; Webb, D. Patrick; Rahimifard, Shahin
    This paper reports the development of a real-time inline Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) detection technique in a beverage manufacturing plant in England and the evaluation of its capability for dynamic Water Footprint (WF) management. The inline technique employed Ultraviolet–Visible (UV-VIS) spectroscopy and Moving Window Partial Least Squares (mwPLS), which was then applied to calculating Grey WF for the production activities in the plant, referred to here as WFrt. A traditional offline COD measurement method was also utilised for the Grey WF calculation, to act as the reference method, referred to here as WFtrad. In a method-comparison study (Bland-Altman Plot), the results showed that WFrt detected the order of magnitude variation of WFtrad, and WFtrad was on average between 0.897 and 1.243 times WFrt with no systematic bias. This indicates that WFrt may be used for both short-time frame (minutes to hours) WF monitoring and long-term (weeks to months) analysis of trends and the effect of WF optimisation strategies.
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    A concept of water usage efficiency to support water reduction in manufacturing industry
    (MDPI, 2016-11-25) Sachidananda, Madhu; Webb, D. Patrick; Rahimifard, Shahin
    Increasing pressures on freshwater supplies, continuity of supply uncertainties, and costs linked to legislative compliance, such as for wastewater treatment, are driving water use reduction up the agenda of manufacturing businesses. A survey is presented of current analysis methods and tools generally available to industry to analyze environmental impact of, and to manage, water use. These include life cycle analysis, water footprinting, strategic planning, water auditing, and process integration. It is identified that the methods surveyed do not provide insight into the operational requirements from individual process steps for water, instead taking such requirements as a given. We argue that such understanding is required for a proactive approach to long-term water usage reduction, in which sustainability is taken into account at the design stage for both process and product. As a first step to achieving this, we propose a concept of water usage efficiency which can be used to evaluate current and proposed processes and products. Three measures of efficiency are defined, supported by a framework of a detailed categorization and representation of water flows within a production system. The calculation of the efficiency measures is illustrated using the example of a tomato sauce production line. Finally, the elements required to create a useable tool based on the efficiency measures are discussed.