Recycling water for industry

Industrial recycling opportunities

Providing recycled water for use by industry is an excellent way of saving drinking water. Sydney Water is working to maximise the amount of recycled water that can be used for industrial purposes.

Of all the water used in Sydney, residential and commercial properties use around 82% and other types of properties, (including primary producers and government), use 6%. Of the total, just 12% is used by industry.

Wollongong Stage 1 Recycled Water Scheme

Sydney Water operates one of the biggest industrial water recycling schemes in Australia, supplying BlueScope Steel in Port Kembla.

Up to 20 million litres of high quality recycled water per day is being delivered to BlueScope Steel from Sydney Water's Wollongong Water Recycling Plant.

This replaces up to 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, which has been operating since 2006, uses micro-filtration and reverse osmosis membrane processes to produce very high quality recycled water, suitable for a range of industrial purposes.

This project alone reduced the use of drinking water across the total Illawarra region by 17%. There is potential to expand to other local industries in the future.

Wollongong Stage 2 Recycled Water Scheme

The Wollongong Stage 2 scheme supplies highly treated, disinfected recycled water to the Port Kembla Coal Terminal, Wollongong Golf Club (PDF - 249KB) and Wollongong City Council (PDF - 244KB) sports fields.

The Wollongong Stage Two Recycled Water Scheme replaces approximately 1.4 million litres a day of drinking water a day.

Sydney Water onsite re-use

Sydney Water's wastewater treatment plants treat and use nearly 15 billion litres of recycled water per year for their treatment processes.

Sydney Water's Operating Licence requires that by 30 June 2009, Sydney Water must have ensured that all sewage treatment plants, (other than Malabar, North Head and Bondi, and storm flow sewage treatment plants at Fairfield, Bellambi and Port Kembla), use at least 85%recycled water for treatment processes.

All relevant plants are already meeting the target, with around 96% recycled water used across all plants - an increase from 50% from five years ago.

North Head Water Recycling Plant

A $3.5 million recycled water facility began operation at North Head Wastewater Treatment Plant in 2005. It produces up to 1.5 million litres of recycled water a day, saving about 550 million litres of drinking water per year.

This is part of a $150 million program of works at North Head Wastewater Treatment Plant, designed to improve the plant's performance and reliability.

Rosehill Recycled Water Scheme

The Rosehill Recycled Water Scheme is a private sector project that began operating in late October 2011. The scheme will initially supply over three billion litres of recycled water each year to five major industrial customers and a racecourse in the Rosehill and Smithfield areas.

AquaNet Sydney (a division of Jemena), in partnership with Veolia Water and supported by Sydney Water, built, owns and operates the $100 million Rosehill Recycled Water Scheme. [read more]