This investment aims to capture liquid effluents that come from the coking plant, the by-products sector and some parts of the rainwater drainage system, before arriving to the river from the Effluent Discharge N° 2.
Currently, the priority of industrial operations relies on taking care of the environment. To fulfill this premise, Ternium added a new facility to collect effluents in order to protect the Paraná River. This system is actively working since January 2020.
How Does it Work?
An underground chamber was built on the coke area and it is in charge of collecting the effluent of different processes. When all effluents are in the chamber, they are conducted to a pumping station on the port entry. At the port entry, there is a tank and two pumps that transport these effluents through the piping of Effluent Discharge N°1 at the coal area. After that, effluents and runoffs from the coal and coke area go straight to the Blast Furnace tanks, where a treatment to remove the non-desired elements is carried out. Solid carbons are kept in these tanks through a sedimentation process, so they can be further recovered and reused as for sintering. Finally, water is sent to the ecological lagoon, where all supernatant products are removed. This guarantees that the effluents reach the river in good conditions and according to the parameters, which are established by the current environmental regulations.
Two pumps filter and transfer the liquid in the tank to the Effluent Discharge N°1
Commentaries about the Project
"I recognize all the effort and commitment of the team that carried out this project, besides the support and collaboration of the areas we work in. This system has currently shown successful results", said Fernanda Figueredo, Civil Engineer in Construction.
"Ternium remains committed to the environmental care in its operations and with each of the projects it undertakes. In this case, the most important thing was to define a strategy to avoid effluents getting to the river. This project allows us to meet current international standards, but mainly to commit to improving water quality", explained Daniel Parodi, a technologist in the industrial services area.
"The work, which consists on the capture and derivation of the effluent, allows us to have greater response time to any process event. It gives us the ability to make a better treatment of the effluent before its final discharge into the river and allows us to operate in a safer environmental way", said Ivana Miotti, Environmental Engineer.
The Head of the Minerals and Coal Area, Andrés Broda, said: "It's an investment that intends to take care of our environment. Those of us who work on coal and coke areas know that it has always been a great challenge to contain effluents as efficiently as possible, so that they don't reach the Effluent Discharge N°2. With these new facilities, this will be much easier and the environment will be better protected."
Putting Safety First
In order to build the catchment area where the underground chamber will operate at a 7-meter depth, an excavation of 1,800 cubic meters was necessary and 21 concrete piles were built to prevent landslides, which allowed working in 100% safe conditions.
Some members of the team who worked in the project. This picture was taken before the pandemic.
The Numbers in the Project
1,800 cubic meters of excavation.
150-meter-long pipe connecting the prechamber to the tank.
2 pumps filtering and transferring the liquid from the tank to the piping N°1.
1.5 km that the effluent runs between the pumping station and the piping N°1.
500,000 liters per hour as its pumping capacity.