At Nobian's salt plant Delfzijl, The Netherlands, 2022
At our production site in Delfzijl we realized a significant saving in fresh water usage by reducing the amount of discharged brine to surface water. Brine is salt dissolved in water and is the raw material needed to produce salt. A new high-tech analytical device, an ED-XRF spectrometer, has been installed as part of our salt production process.
This device can measure in real time the amount of bromide, sulphate and other elements present in the brine; controlling these concentrations is very important when producing high quality salt. Now, instead of discharging an excess of brine based on a measurement taken every eight hours, we can control it continuously based on actual real time values. As brine is produced by dissolving solid salt in fresh water, reducing the amount of discharged brine also reduces the amount of fresh water taken in. This has resulted in a saving of more than 50,000m³ of fresh water per year, while reducing the amount of discharged brine.