Industrial Sectors Producing Saline Effluents

According to WssTP (2012) as brine can be defined a water stream which has almost reached saturation point with dissolved salt content (> 50 g/l). Many industrial processes produce considerable amounts of wastewater with high salt concentrations. Even though these saline impaired wastewater streams may have salinity less than 50g/l, it is common to characterize them as brines. These saline impaired water streams can be generated mainly from different industrial activities. The composition of industrial brines varies from branch to branch and from site to site, making each saline wastewater stream generated in process industries almost unique. To deal with this variety, for brine generators the general information for each sector and the main characteristics of the brine streams produced are provided based mainly on BREF documents in order to obtain broad information about the targeted sectors.