Mobarakeh Steel Company, the largest steel company in Iran and the wider Middle East and North Africa region, is the first industrial complex that has replaced freshwater with reclaimed wastewater in Isfahan Province, the head of the company’s Operations Department said.
“The company has set up a 500-km wastewater network, equipped with 14 pumping stations, to collect and transfer 12 million cubic meters of sewage per year from nine small towns, including Mobarakeh, Lenjan, Dizicheh, Zibashahr, Talkhouncheh and Sadeh, to a wastewater treatment plant in the complex,” Hamidreza Khosravani was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Costing $40 million, the plan has helped the company reduce its extraction from depleting groundwater resources by 45%, he added.
Khosravani said operations to increase the length of network to 700 kilometers are underway and more towns will be linked to the grid by the yearend.
A part of the factory's need has been met from Zayandehroud Dam, but due to chronic water shortages, the steelmaker is rethinking policy with the understanding that using water from Zayandehroud Dam is no longer an option.
“Developing wastewater infrastructure can help ensure that recycling can better address the company’s need for long-term supplies. MSC has significantly reduced water consumption over the past 25 years,” he said.
"The plant consumed 16,000 liters of water to produce 1 ton of steel in 1994, which has been cut by five times to 3,000 liters."
MSC's annual output is about 7.2 million tons, for which 22 billion liters of water are used. Water consumption was 37 billion liters in 1994 for barely producing 2 million tons of steel.
Referring to similar moves, Khosravani said a 5-km pipeline was laid last year to transfer wastewater from lagoons in Zarrin-Shahr to wastewater treatment facilities in the steel company.
The establishment of an 18-km pipeline to supply wastewater from Najafabad to the steel company is also on the agenda. There is no denying that steelmakers are using huge amounts of water in dry regions like Isfahan and the need to recycle and reuse wastewater has become a dire issue.
Sustainable Solutions
According to experts such as the late Parviz Kardavani, a veteran eremologist and faculty member of Tehran University, Iran is fast approaching a full-fledged water crisis and if sustainable solutions are not found, “water-intensive industries and the agriculture sector will become a thing of the past sooner rather than later”.
The attitude of “developing industries come what may” will inflict substantial losses, he warned.
“These industries should have been built in the coastal regions where there is sufficient access to seawater. Now that it is impossible to relocate, they must develop wastewater infrastructure,” Kardavani said.
The no-nonsense conservationist has for years called for rewriting macro industrial policies, especially those related to water-intensive industries like steel, but the plea has fallen on deaf ears.
"I’m really amazed how officials keep inaugurating dozens of factories in Yazd and Isfahan without considering the implications of such unsustainable development," he said, adding that such plants need huge volumes of water while people's access to the resource remains limited.
Greywater Systems
According to Hashem Amini, the head of state-owned Isfahan Province Water and Wastewater Company (a subsidiary of the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran), the provincial engineering council has started to build infrastructure for greywater treatment systems in the urban and suburban areas.
Isfahan University and Isfahan City Center (a large commercial and entertainment mall) have been equipped with greywater reuse systems and plan to expand the system.
Greywater is defined as all wastewater generated in the home, except toilet water (which is considered “blackwater”).
After Yazd, Isfahan is the second biggest industrial hub and 70% of Iran’s steel are manufactured in this province, which explains why unconventional water resources have become a pressing necessity.
Generating wastewater has increased globally mainly due to rapid urbanization and industrialization. The scarcity of pure water in many areas is driving the use and expansion of wastewater treatment plants.
According to Business Wire, the global wastewater treatment system market is expected to cross $15 billion by the end of 2025 and is largely driven by stringent laws enacted by governments for environmental protection.
Wastewater treatment plants are costly to establish and maintain. This is one of the major obstacles hampering the construction of wastewater systems and a major challenge in poor countries and small businesses with limited budgets.
