Water Footprint for Integrated Steel Plant—JSW Steel Ltd, Ballari

Abstract

Due to industrialization, there is an increase in the consumption of fresh water, but water is a finite resource. It is necessary to account the quantity of water use and water consumption as well as impact of production process on the water resources. Water footprint study is conducted for JSW Vijayanagara, for sustainability development. Water footprint is an indicator of fresh water consumption, expressing the environmental impacts, not only the direct use of producer or consumer. Water footprint was conducted based on the ISO: 14046: 2014 methodology. The study involves fixing the scope and system boundary of the work, for this work Gate-to-Gate system boundary is considered. The next step is inventory assessment (i.e., calculation of water use for different processes from Gate-to-Gate). After inventory, impact assessment, which helps in assessing whether water use is balancing the needs of humans and nature, this is done using the GaBi 6 software, The software gives impacts of production process on the water resource. Based on the inventory assessment and results obtained from GaBi 6 software, response strategies reduce the water footprint and improve its sustainability. From this study, the water footprint for the Vijayanagara as per the pfister approach is 43.05 Mm³. The water stress index (WSI) may serve as a simple screening indicator for the assessment of water use, accounting for water availability and withdrawals. The water stress index for Vijayanagar is 0.524, which falls under saviour stress region