Wastewater recover, recycle and reuse in Steel Industry

Pramod Kumar
Roll Number 11CE36001
Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur - 721302, India
E-mail: yourpramodmdp@gmail.com

Abstract
The Indian steel industry has entered into a new era of development since 2007-08, riding high on
the resurgent economy and robust demand for steel. Rapid rise in production has resulted in India
becoming the 4th largest producer of crude steel and the largest producer of sponge iron in the
world1. Capacity addition of 122MTPA is expected till 2017 from both Greenfield and brownfield
routes. CPCB has classified steel industry among the 17 most polluting industry. With rise in steel
production the pollution will also increase hence proper treatment systems has to be designed
[Accenture &CII, 2013].
Steel Plants are now told to be operated as Zero Water Discharged system. Complete recycle of the
intake water has to be done. Indian industries are also very poor at water and power use efficiency.
The average water volume consumed is 3-6m3 per ton of steel production but in India it is 25-60
m3/ton of steel production. However due to slack standards & other reasons pollution boards are not
taking it seriously.
In this paper the wastewater management practices currently practiced in the steel industry is being
presented. The majority of wastewater have SS & they are clarified and reused. Water having Oil and
grease is treated using DAF to be reused.
Treating the Coke Oven plant by product wastewater and removing dissolved salts are the biggest
challenges in wastewater engineering in the steel industry nowadays.

Problem Introduction
The Coke Oven plant by product plants waste is of major concern. It produces highly polluted water
having phenols, cynades,ammonia thiosulphates etc. The commonly used method is to treat it
biologically in the BOD plant. The sludge is used as fuel and the treated water is reused in quenching
& other processes. Phenolic substances in wastewater are known to createtaste and odor problems
even at 0.002 mg/l level when chlorinated.Fish living in water containing non-toxic level of phenol are
found to be affected.Soluble iron and manganese are known to give rise to bad taste in drinking
watereven at 0.1 mg/l.
The water is recycled many times in the steel plant, hence its TDS goes high. TDS removal is a big
challenge for the steel plants. Using water with high TDS decreases the steel quality & also corrodes
the equipments.

Steel Industry processes

Flow chart of the steel making process :

The sources of wastewater:

1. Coal Washery: The coal is washed with water to remove the foreign solid materials present
in it. Generally the processes in the coal washery include crushing ,screening and wet
washing of coal.Water used for washing is recycled and re-used after sedimentation.
Wastewater comes out from the underflow of the sedimentation tank . It contains coal
fines,shale,clay and small quantities of other minerals like calcite,gypsum,kaoline,pyrite etc.
2. Coke Oven :carbonization of coal is done by heating coal in the absence of air at temperature
range of 900-1100C in an oven . The gas evolved is collected through stand pipes and cooled
in stages. In the first stage the gas is cooled to about 80C by spraying cold liquor over the gas
,producing tar as the condensate.In the second stage it is further cooled to 30C, producing
condensate as tar & ammonia liquor.These two condensate liquors after the separation of tar
in a tar-decantor, are recycled in the first stage. The excess liquor known as ammonia liquor

is distilled to recover ammonia. In the third stage the gas is cooled and compressed for further
recovery of chemicals.In this process tar & ammonia are separated. Also light oils are
recovered.
The largest single source of wastewater from the Coke oven plant having the highest pollution
potential is the ammonia still from where the waste ammoniacal liquor comes out.The second
source is the Oil recovery section.
3. Blast Furnace wastewater: The BF gas is heavily loaded with flue dust. The liquid waste
comes out from the wet scrubbers .This wastewater contains mainly suspended solids, hence
clarified and re-used.
4. Steel Melting Shop: Water is generally used for cooling purposed. It never poses pollution
control problem. It is used for different secondary purposes.
5. Rolling Mills:During rolling , lots of scales are given off, these are collected at the scale pit.It
also contains Oil & grease. Pickling process produces acidic wastewater.
Table 1: Wastewater from different sources and their characteristics

Source
Coal Washery
Coke Oven

Blast furnace
Steel Melting shop
Rolling mills shop

m3/ton

Characteristics

0.18

TSS-6000mg/l,Chloride-13mg/l

0.14

Ammonia-300-350mg/l,Phenol-900-1000,thiosulpha

0.02

from benzol plant,phenol-100mg/l,ammonia-20mg/l,

0.5

water fromGCP,TSS-1-2g/l,TDS-400mg/l Cl-220mg

Cooling water

TSS-500mg/l,Oil&grease-60-80mg/l,

Other auxilliary plants

Entire quantity is boiler blowdown,ph-10-11,SiO2-60

Power plant

0.13
Iron particle,high tss

Scale pit
Highly acidic
Pickling waste

IMPACT OF STEEL INDUSTRY EFFLUENTS ON WATER BODIES

The major pollutional effects of the untreated wastewaters of steel industry if discharged
into the receiving water bodies are: toxicity to aquatic life, reduction of D.O., silting due
to suspended solids, taste and odor problems, temperature rise affecting the dissolved
oxygen and aquatic life and formation of oil slicks due to floating oil. Toxicity to aquatic
life due to ammonia, phenols (monohydric, Polyhydric and derivatives of phenols) and
cyanide is well known. With the rise of pH value, the concentration of free ammonia
increases. Hence, ammonia toxicity is particularly severe at high pH. Due to discharge of
biodegradable organic substances from CO and BP plant into the water bodies, the soil

and water bacteria utilize the organic matter as source of carbon and dissolved oxygen
(DO) in the water for the respirational requirement.
Considerable quantities of suspended and colloidal matter in the discharge reduces the
penetration of sunlight. In the water bodies, resulting in reduction of Photosynthetic
activity, an essential feature of self purification of polluted water bodies. Suspended and
colloidal matter can also smother bottom dwelling aquatic organisms affecting the life of
water bodies/streams and may lead to heavy siltation which affects the flow.
Untrapped oil and grease from the effluent lead to formation of ugly oil slicks and
iridescent, colour which cause poor aesthetics. Oil slicks also reduce the diffusion of
oxygen from the atmosphere to water affecting self purification. Where steel plants
are located on the coasts, wave action invariably brings back oil and grease to the
shore and spoils the beaches.
Coal-tar from coke oven and byproduct creates maximum physical problems. Light
tar floats on water and attaches itself to anything on its way giving an ugly
appearance and heavy matter settles down choking the pipes and cavities in waste
treatment units. Phenolic substances in coke oven wastewater are known to create
taste and odor problems even at 0.002 mg/l level when chlorinated.
Fish living in water containing non-toxic level of phenol are found to be affected.
Soluble iron and manganese are known to give rise to bad taste in drinking water
even at 0.1 mg/l.
Hot uncontaminated effluents in steel plants can reduce DO level and decrease the
solubility of oxygen. Nearly 2/3 of water consumed in steel plants is used for heat
exchange only and requires' no treatment except cooling. This water should be
segregated, cooled and recirculated recalculated. [2,3]

Treatment Processes
The steel industry has mostly wastewater with high SS. Some streams have Oil &
grease high concentration. The Wastewater from Coke Oven plant is of considerably
polluted and require specialized treatment. The general methods used are summarized
as in the Table 2.

Table 2: Summary of treatment processes of steel industry wastewater

Characteristics

Treatment provided

Disposal of the treated water

Suspended Solids

Clarification for settling of

SS

Recycling to process make up water

Oil/grease

Oil removal, settling

Recycled

Acidic

FeSO4 generation used for

clarification

Reused as coagulants in clarification processes

Phenolic ( BOD-4000mg/l,COD6500mg/l, TSS-125mg/l,

Oil&grease-50mg/l, Phenol-9001100mg/l, Ammonia-300-350mg/l)

BOD Plant, removal of

Oil&grease,

Recycled within the plant

phenol,cyanide, BOD &COD

The BOD plant used to treat Phenolic wastewater can give better efficiency if the phenol
concentration is reduced by mixing the ammonia liquor with the coal washery water .
Both can be sent for clarification using lime , then to the BOD plant.
A 6MTPA Steel plant in Orissa is having a BOD plant of capacity 440m3/hr.
There are many chemical, electrochemical, photochemical methods are available to treat
this water but none of them are used on a commercial level due to high cost.
Other alternatives

Ammonia liquor to quench hot coke , it destroys phenol but corrods the
equipments
Phenol recovery by liquid extraction methods mainly benzene as solvent before it
enters the ammonia still for ammnia stripping. The extracted phenols can be
recovered by treating with NaOH solution as sodium phenolate Crude phenol is
liberated by using gases containing CO2.
Not economical hence not used commonly

Conclusion & Discussion

The discussion on the steel wastewater treatment reveals that there are practices to reuse the
process water within the plants very common.
The most polluting component is the coke oven plant & it require specialized treatment.
It contains high concentration of phenols. The phenols can be recovered but recovering process is not
adopted in the industry. Many giants like Tatasteel,Jindal Steel even go for biological treatment.
TDS removal is gaining its important. Due to pressure from Pollution control boards, any Steel plant
should not discharge any wastewater outside its premises. This has compelled the Steel companies
to install TDS removal processes to better re-use their process water.

Future Projections

Economical TDS removal techniques will gain importance in future.

Uses of UV, H2O2 may be more practiced as the technology advances with more research in
this field.

References

Comprehensive Industry Document Series COINDS/27/1998 CPCB, New Delhi.

K. orbahti, Tanyola-c, Continuous electrochemical treatment of phenolic wastewater
in a tubular reactor,2003
Malwina, Gabriela, The removal of phenols from wastewater through sorption on Activated
Carbon, 2012

Mirbagheri, Biglarijoo, Ahmadi, Efficiency of Two Types of Activated Carbon Columns to

Treat Industrial Wastewater: A Case Study, 2013
Rao & Datta , Wastewater Treatment by, 3rd edition
Sirajuddin , AHMED Wastewater Treatment Technologies Commonly Practised in Major
Steel Industries in India ,2009.