Energy Saving from Tap Water Home Treatment Devices

Water is the only liquid used in human eating which presents different production and transportation processes. All the alimentary liquids, in fact, need production and sanification processes in controlled environments and transportation on carriers. On the other hand, besides more simple production processes, water can rely both on distribution networks and transportation on carriers. In the last years, bottled water consumption greatly increased not only for healthy needs but also for non-essential ones. In fact, only in few cases bottled water is used for a real need of specific characteristics and more and more its use is due to the perceived poor quality of tap water. Recent studies demonstrated that energy consumption related to bottled water can be up to 2000 times bigger than the ones related to tap water. In fact, energy consumptions for bottled waters come out mainly from the production of PET bottles, from the bottling process and, finally, from transport/distribution. In this paper, avoiding a comparison between bottled and tap water about the chemical-physical, microbiological and gustative characteristics, the authors present the results of an experimental study aimed to measure energy consumption of tap water domestic treatment devices. Moreover, the potential energy savings coming from the use of treated tap water are focused.