Steam, which is widely used for heating, humidifying and air conditioning purposes both at factories and offices, is generated by heating water by boilers. When water is heated by a boiler, silica contained in it will not evaporate and remain within the boiler. The concentration of the substance in boiler water will therefore gradually increase to form scales on the inside surface of the boiler. This prevents the heat conductivity of the boiler, resulting in energy loss and causing various problems including damage to the boiler itself. To prevent the formation of scales, it is necessary to partially discharge the boiler water and add new water to the boiler, but this increases the use of fuel to heat the newly supplied water. The reduction of the use of fuel poses a challenge to factories and offices.
In response, Kurita Water Industries has developed boiler water treatment chemicals with excellent silica dispersibility, thanks to which the concentration of silica in boiler water can be increased to double the level possible with conventional chemicals. This in turn reduces the amount of boiler water discharged, contributing to a reduction in the use of fuel to heat boiler water.
The product has already been adopted by customers in a range of industries and has worked well as expected.

Plating factories have to meet the needs for uniform and thinner plating for electronic components, the quality of which has been increasingly improved. The factories use solutions that contain valuable metals such as copper in the plating process, during which valuable metals contained in the solutions decrease and their ion composition changes. In order to maintain plating quality, solutions need to be replaced with new ones if their ion composition changes, which generates a large amount of waste. The factories needed to solve this economic and environmental problem.
In response, Kurita Water Industries has developed the KCDI®-SP water treatment system to separate ions in plating solutions in a selective manner. By removing unnecessary ions alone from the solutions while leaving the valuable metals required for the plating process, the ion composition can be kept unchanged to ensure stable and uniform plating on a long-term basis. The use of this system eliminates the need to replace solutions, thereby substantially reducing the amount of waste generated in the plating process.
The system has already been adopted by some copper plating factories and has been working well as expected.

The KCDI®-SP system removes ions in a selective manner.

For the treatment of wastewater containing organic matter, microorganisms are generally used. Specifically, depending upon the types of microorganisms used, the aerobic or anaerobic treatment method is adopted. The anaerobic treatment method has great environmental merits compared with aerobic treatment method, because it does not require electricity for aeration and the methane gas generated from the treatment process can be reused while surplus sludge volumes are relatively small. The treatment method, however, has also demerits: the "granule sludge" (1- to 3-mm granules composed of filamentous microorganisms) is used for the treatment, but the conditions for granule sludge cannot be kept in a stable manner for wastewater containing organic matter in low concentrations, and so the treatment method cannot be applied to the treatment of low-concentration wastewater.
In response, Kurita Water Industries has developed the Biosaver® TK, a plastic carrier to which microorganisms are attached. The carrier retains microorganisms at a high level and is suitable for sedimentation, preventing microorganisms from flowing out of the treatment tank. With the use of this carrier, the anaerobic treatment method can therefore be applied also to low-concentration organic wastewater.

Carrier to which microorganisms are attached