VSP launches sewage water treatment plant

Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) has taken up an ambitious and unique project to treat sewage water and use it in its rolling mills and steel melt shop.

The project, costing around Rs 5 crore, is meant for treating sewage through tertiary clarifier, multi-grade filters and ultra filtration with two point chlorination, Y Sivasagar Rao, chairman and managing director of VSP, said.

Inaugurating an ultra filtration system-based sewage recycling system, the first of its kind in Andhra Pradesh, Rao said the plant would help VSP save water to the tune of 1 mgpd ( million gallons per day), which would result in saving of Rs 1.3 crore per year.

"Apart from good savings for VSP, the project will make significant contribution to environment protection and conservation of scarce natural resource," he said.

With the commissioning of this plant, the specific water consumption of VSP, which was at 2.76 cum/tonne of liquid steel (TLS) in 2004-05, the best in Indian steel industry, and one of the best at world level, would come down to around 2.3 cum/TLS, he said.

Three imported skids of ultra filtration membranes with a maximum flow rate of 350 cubic metres/hour have been installed for a recovery rate of 85 per cent with a quality of suspended solids and turbidity levels of less than one ppm (parts per million).

The cost of water thus produced would be less than the cost of water being received by VSP from the Godavari river, he said.

K Sree Ramamurthy, environmental engineer at the regional office of A P Pollution Control Board, Vizag, lauded VSP's initiative in preserving the precious natural resource.