Water management in the Flemish steel industry: the Arcelor Gent case

Steel production is an energy- and water-intensive process: large quantities of water are used for cooling, process and environmental-technical applications. In the mid-1990s, Arcelor Gent, a large integrated carbon steel producing company in Flanders (Belgium), started a number of water-related projects: the existing water infrastructure was adapted: the water from the coke plant was biologically treated; canal water was demineralised using reverse osmosis; waste water from the blast furnaces was neutralised with alkaline water from the steel plant. As a result of these projects, the quantity of discharged waste water was reduced by a factor of 2 (water recycling doubled from a factor of 10 to a factor of 20), and the discharge of pollutants decreased. Also resource consumption decreased: lime used in the steel plant, could be recovered to precipitate Zn in the waste water of the blast furnaces.