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Recycling Water For Industry
Industrial recycling opportunities
Providing recycled water for use by industry is an excellent way of saving drinking water. So we are working to maximise the amount of recycled water that can be used for industrial purposes.
Of all the water used in Sydney, homes use around 70 per cent, businesses use 20 per cent and governments use 10 per cent. Of the total, just 12 per cent is used by industry.
However, recycled water is not used for all industrial uses. Many of the largest industrial users are food and beverage companies that make consumables such as beer and soft drinks. These companies can only utilise drinking water for this purpose, as much of the community is uncomfortable with the idea of using recycled wastewater for cooking or drinking.
Recycled water is very suitable for use in industrial processes. Recycling billions of litres is being done as follows.
BlueScope Steel
Sydney Water operates one of the biggest water recycling schemes in Australia, for industrial use by BlueScope Steel in Port Kembla.
About twenty million litres of high quality recycled water per day is being delivered to BlueScope Steel from a new recycled water plant at Sydney Water's Wollongong Sewage Treatment Plant.
This replaces 7.3 billion litres of drinking water per year previously drawn from the local Avon Dam, a 57 % reduction of drinking water consumption by Sydney Water's largest customer.
The water recycling plant at Wollongong uses micro-filtration and reverse osmosis membrane processes to produce high quality recycled water suitable for a range of industrial purposes such as cooling systems.
This project alone reduced the use of drinking water across the total Illawarra region by 17 per cent. There is potential to expand to other local industries in the future.
BlueScope Steel recycling is part of the Illawarra Wastewater Strategy.
Wollongong Stage 2 Recycled Water Scheme
The Wollongong Stage Two scheme will supply highly treated, disinfected recycled water via new pipelines to the Port Kembla Coal Terminal, Wollongong Golf Club and nearby Wollongong Council Parks.
Recycled water will be used for irrigation at Wollongong Council's JJ Kelly Park, Greenhouse Park and Vikings Rugby Field and to irrigate the Wollongong Golf Course. The coal terminal will mainly use recycled water for dust suppression.
The Wollongong Stage Two Recycled Water Scheme will increase recycled water use by 1.6 million litres per day and replace approximately 1.4 million litres a day of drinking water.
The project is now in the final stages of construction, with recycled water scheduled to become available to the coal terminal, golf club and council in October 2008.
Sydney Water Onsite Reuse
Sydney Water's sewage treatment plants treat and use 10 billion litres of recycled water per year for their own operations. Around 85 per cent of water used in the plants is recycled water - an increase from 50 per cent five years ago.
More than 29 million litres of recycled water are used in Sydney Water sewage treatment operations each day.
North Head Sewage Treatment Plant
A newly constructed $3.5 million recycled water facility began operation at North Head Sewage Treatment Plant in 2005. It is expected to use 1.5 million litres of recycled water a day, saving about 550 million litres of drinking water per year.
This is part of a $100 million program of works at North Head Sewage Treatment Plant designed to improve the plant's reliability.
