Environmental impact assessment of wastewater discharge with multi-pollutants from iron and steel industry

Abstract

The iron and steel industry discharges large quantities of wastewater. The environmental impact of the wastewater is traditionally assessed from the quantitative aspect. However, the water quality of discharged wastewater plays a more significant role in damaging the natural environment. Moreover, comprehensive assessment of multi-pollutants in wastewater from both quality and quantity is still a gap. In this work, a total environmental impact score (TEIS) is defined to assess the environmental impact of wastewater discharge, by considering the volume of wastewater and the quality of main processes. To implement the comprehensively qualitative and quantitative assessment, a field monitoring and measurement of wastewater discharge volume and the quality is conducted to acquire pH, suspend solids (SS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), total iron (TFe), and hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)). The sequence of TEIS values is obtained as steelmaking > ironmaking > sintering > hot rolling > coking > cold rolling and TN > COD > SS > pH > Cr(VI) > TFe. The TEIS of the investigated steel plant is 26.27. The leading process lies in steelmaking with a TEIS of 19.98. The dominant pollutant is TN with a TEIS of 15.00. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to validate the feasibility and generalisability of the TEIS.

Keywords: Environmental impact assessment; Iron and steel industry; Total environmental impact score (TEIS); Wastewater pollutant; Water quality.