OREANDA-NEWS. NLMK Group, Russia's leading manufacturer of high-value added steel products, became a winner of the 20th international Metal-Expo'2014 industrial exhibition. The gold medal was awarded for a unique environmental project - a biochemical waste water treatment facility at coke and chemical operations at the Lipetsk production site.

The Metal-Expo organization committee introduced the gold and silver medals in 2003. They are awarded to companies and organizations that have developed and implemented equipment and technologies at the most advanced technical level.

Sergey Filatov, Novolipetsk Managing Director, said:

"That our environmental project is held in such high esteem at a prestigious international competition serves as an acknowledgement of our technical achievements and environmental responsibility. The Lipetsk production site has achieved unprecedented results in the course of implementing the previous stages of its Environmental Programme: specific air emissions have been halved since 2000, while steel production has increased by 51%; and waste water discharge has been completely halted. But we are not going to stop at that and are continuing our ongoing efforts to reduce the company's environmental footprint as part of NLMK's Environmental Programme 2020. Our goal is to become the industry leaders in environmental efficiency. This project is yet another step towards achieving this important goal."

The new facility designed using the best available technologies will provide a twenty-fold improvement in the quality of treatment of coke and chemical operations waste water for reuse in the closed-loop water cycle.

The facility employs a custom technology developed by Russian scientists for deep biochemical water purification from phenols, rhodanides, ammoniacal nitrogen and its oxides (nitrites and nitrates) in one stage, whilst the previous technology required several stages. Elimination of these obsolete stages allows for up to 95% waste water purification from nitrites and nitrates.

All infrastructure and utilities were installed above ground on an isolated concrete area equipped with a rain, melt and drain water collector, preventing any chance of groundwater pollution in the event of a containment failure and providing twenty-fold reduction in air emissions of specific pollutants that are generated as industrial waste evaporates.

Total investment into the project which was implemented as part of NLMK's Environmental Programme 2020 exceed RUB 2 billion.