Carbon footprint of drinking water softening as determined by life cycle assessment

In the Netherlands, central softening of drinking water is widely applied for reasons of public health, client comfort, economic and environmental benefits. Currently, the detrimental contributions of softening, in particular the use of chemicals and energy, are taken into account in the carbon footprint of the Dutch drinking water companies....

Fast and comfortable hand luggage stowage unites in the Flying-V

The Flying-V in itself is an excellent project to view in which an extraordinary collaboration between different faculties of Delft University of Technology and companies work closely together. This project’s beauty is that through innovations, we can start a new way of flying with a white canvas. This project focuses on how passengers, cabin...

Increased sustainability of softening by producing pure calcite pellets for reuse

About 50% of the drinking water in the Netherlands is centrally softened by the drinking water companies in a process known as pellet softening. In this process a base and seeding material are mixed in an upflow reactor, where subsequently CaCO3 precipitates on a seed core as pellets. The seeding material is usually sand, but recently CaCO3 was...

Production, use and reuse of Dutch calcite in drinking water pellet softening

In The Netherlands, 50% of the drinking water is treated with pellet softening for various reasons: i) public health (heavy metal solubility), ii) costs (warm water device maintenance, energy and soap requirement), iii) environmental benefits (energy and soap requirement) and iv) customer comfort (scaling) [2]. Calcium carbonate crystallizes on...