To draw on unconventional water resources for industrial use in the arid province of Khuzestan, Abadan’s wastewater treatment plant’s output will be sold to Abadan Oil Refinery, the head of the provincial Water and Wastewater Company said.
“The National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran (Abfa) and the oil refining company have agreed to sign a contract, based on which the former will supply the latter with reclaimed wastewater for industrial purposes,” Mohammad Reza Karaminejad was quoted as saying by ISNA.
Abadan’s wastewater treatment project has registered 80% progress and will become operational in March 2023, he added, noting that 500 km of the network have been laid to collect and transfer effluent to the treatment facility.
The official said water-intensive industries, such as refineries, are almost wiping out the limited water resources in most provinces, including Khuzestan, and the need to recycle and reuse wastewater has become a do-or-die issue.
One effective approach is to stop tapping into the dwindling underground water tables and build as many wastewater treatment plants as possible to recycle not only industrial but also household sewage.
Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian said the allocation of wastewater to industrial and agricultural sectors is one of its major programs.
“Protecting water and soil resources is the most important issue …
One of the ways to protect water is by using treated wastewater in industries, farms and green spaces,” he added.
Conserving Resources
Wastewater is playing an increasingly important role in conserving water resources in most countries.
Insufficient treatment of wastewater and fecal sludge spreads disease and is a driver of antimicrobial resistance. Demand for wastewater as a reliable source of water and nutrients for agriculture is growing in response to population growth, urbanization, increasing water scarcity and the effects of climate change.
Safe sanitation systems are critical to protect public health. WHO is leading efforts to monitor the global spread of sanitation-related diseases and access to safely managed sanitation and wastewater treatment, as well as factors that enable or hinder progress under the sustainable development agenda.
“In 2016, the construction of five wastewater treatment plants in Khorramshahr, Abadan, Shadegan, Bandar Imam Khomeini and Mahshahr [all in Khuzestan Province] started,” he said.
“However, the projects were halted due to financial issues after making 60% physical progress.”
Karaminejad noted that it took a while to resolve the problems and since the beginning of the current Iranian year (March 2021), the construction process of wastewater treatment plants resumed and Shadegan plant began operating last month.
“The remaining three plants will become operational within a year. The total investment for all the five treatment plants is about $50 million and they will have a total capacity of 300,000 cubic meters per day,” he said.
The first phase of the wastewater treatment plant in Shadegan County has a capacity of treating 20,000 cubic meters of effluent per day. It will help preserve the city’s underground water resources and optimize wastewater for agriculture.
The plant’s development plan will start soon and upon the completion of second phase, the facility’s processing capacity will reach 26,000 cubic meters per day.
Pragmatic Solution
While the use of reclaimed wastewater has been recognized as a critical and pragmatic solution to deal with water scarcity across the globe, it is regrettable that in some regions of Iran, including Khomein County in Markazi Province, industrialists and farmers still insist on extracting water from depleting ground resources instead of tapping into unconventional resources.
According to Yousef Erfani Nasab, the head of the Markazi Water and Wastewater Company, as there is a small market for recycled water, it is poured into rivers, and the odor has made life miserable for residents in and around small towns of the county over the last 10 years.
“A paradigm shift is necessary to create and promote an economic system in which wastewater is considered a precious resource rather than a liability,” he said.
“Only a fraction of treated wastewater produced in Khomein County’s Wastewater Treatment Plant is used in industries and the rest is dumped into rivers.”
Treatment capacity of Khomein sewage treatment plant is 4.5 million cubic meters a year, of which less than 2 million cubic meters are used by municipalities and industries, such as steel, petrochemicals and car factories.
