Press Releases

Kurita Water Industries Ltd. (Head Office: Nakano-ku, Tokyo; President: Michiya Kadota; hereinafter "Kurita") is pleased to announce that it is promoting water reclamation and reuse as an initiative for securing water, which is necessary for the development of industries and people's lives as well as the effective use of water resources.

The recycled water supply service to be launched by Kurita is a new water supply service, in which the company reclaims a variety of wastewater generated in plants and factories and purifies it into water of reusable quality for manufacturing or similar processes (recycled water). Kurita installs the CORR^TM system, its new, independently-developed standardized wastewater reclamation system, on the premises of customers, and provides all operations ranging from operation management to maintenance. By offering recycled water of a stable quantity and quality in this way, Kurita will contribute to solving issues related to water resources faced by customers.

Wastewater from plants and factories is treated to eliminate its impact on the surrounding environment before being discharged into sewers or rivers. Reusing this wastewater as recycled water generates economic effects, such as the reduction of water and sewerage costs, not to mention the reduction of customers' water consumption. In Japan, an increasing number of customers reuse wastewater, mainly in industries with high water consumption. This is expected to spread to a wide range of industries. Overseas, water shortages are becoming more serious, mainly in emerging countries with remarkable economic growth, due in part to an increasing population, urbanization, and the progress of industrialization. This has resulted in the rapid growth in demand for use of recycled wastewater.

Kurita has delivered wastewater reclamation systems to customers in diverse industries, aiming for the effective, sustainable use of water resources. It has achieved high levels of reuse for wastewater from plants and factories, such as recycling all wastewater from the manufacturing process in an LCD panel factory. However, a wastewater reclamation system for a factory or plant has a lot of components and uses many types of chemicals, because the use of water in such a facility greatly affects the water quality and the level of quality varies dramatically. This created issues for customers, that is, stable operation and maintenance of the system as well as the reduction of initial and running costs.

The CORR^TM system, the standardized wastewater reclamation system from Kurita, enables stable operation with a condensed installation space (25% compared to previous systems from Kurita) and proprietary chemical technologies. The compact dimensions were enabled by the system's simple structure, which consists of pre-treatment equipment and demineralizer. It was achieved by utilizing wastewater reclamation technologies and expertise in operation management, which have been cultivated by Kurita, and optimally combining technologies for water treatment chemicals and water treatment facilities.

In the recycled water supply service to be launched by Kurita, the CORR^TM system is installed on the customer's premises as Kurita's asset and Kurita undertakes all operations, from operation management to maintenance. This provides the quantity of recycled water demanded by each customer, with the required quality, for fees charged according to the supplied amount. At the same time, Kurita offers optimal operation management and maintenance service by predicting the appropriate time for cleaning and replacing consumables with remote monitoring based on IT sensing technology. This service enables customers to minimize the consumption of clean water and the amount of water discharged into sewers, thereby reducing the water utility cost. It presents customers with a variety of values, such as reduced capital investment (no need for initial investment), no required labor for operation management and maintenance, and the solution to the shortage of human resources involved in water treatment.

Combined with the KWSS^SM (*) , a pure water supply service provided by Kurita, the recycled water supply service helps reduce the total cost of water treatment in a factory or plant, from pure water supply to the reclamation and reuse of wastewater.

Kurita focuses its efforts on the creation of shared value with society by positioning the solution of issues related to water resources, realization of sustainable use of energy, waste reduction, and advancing industrial production technologies as social issues to be addressed intensively in MVP-22 (Maximize Value Proposition 2022), the medium-term management plan, which launched in April.

Kurita will apply the recycled water supply service to customers from a variety of regions and industries to solve issues related to water resources on a global scale, thereby providing the value of water reclamation and reuse globally.

The Kurita Group will continue to take initiatives for securing water needed for people's lives and the development of industries, and make effective use of it.

• （*）Related press release:Kurita Announces Launch of KWSS (Kurita Water Supply Service), a Pure Water Supply Service for the Small- and Medium-Sized Pure Water Treatment Equipment Market (August 29, 2016)