Using river water for recooling
The use of a water-to-water heat transfer allows the heat generated to be dissipated in a river or sea, for example. Which results in savings in the evaporation of make-up water. So losses are reduced. What's more, the investment costs and space requirements for a heat exchanger are far lower than for cooling towers.
Water treatment
With the treatment of the make-up water in particular, we are able to reduce the volume of make-up water by increasing the degree of thickening. So less water needs to be fed into the process.
Another option is to treat a portion of the blowdown water using reverse osmosis, thereby reducing the amount of new make-up water required, as the treated blowdown water is fed back into the circuit as make-up water.