The end of the ANR project “MINIMEAU” on water consumption minimization in the industry.
The Minimeau project (co-funded by the National Research Agency) aimed at minimizing water consumption in the agri-food industries through the development of an integrated approach combining Water Footprint and Mass Pinch. In this 4-year project, ProSim was associated with AgroParisTech, INRAE, and 5 ACTIA centers (Association for Technical Coordination in the Agri-food Industry). At the end of this project, it was demonstrated that potential savings of up to 30% could be achieved.
As part of this project, ProSim enhanced its software solution to improve the efficiency and performance of processes in terms of water resources. ProSimPlus, our steady-state process simulator, is used by industrial companies to create a digital twin of their process. This step allows for validating the mass and energy balances of the process and reconciling inventory data for energy and water audits of the process. With this central component provided by ProSimPlus, three axes were developed within the MINIMEAU project:
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Regeneration and treatment of industrial effluents for reuse purposes.
New membrane filtration unit operations have been developed (tubular, flat, and spiral membrane filters). These new modules enable modeling of complex membrane filtration systems such as reverse osmosis, for example.
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Tools for process resource and discharge inventories.
Inventory modules have been integrated into the ProSimPlus library. They allow for easy creation of electrical, material, water, or utility balances for all or part of the process (the balance area is defined by the user). The results of these balances are thus easily exploitable and analyzable by the end-user. These modules also generate the necessary information to use the environmental gain calculation tool developed as part of the project, through a water footprint or Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), thus enabling comparison of different solutions.
