Water management and recycling at Geelong Refinery

 

In recent years, Viva Energy has introduced a host of programs to improve the environmental performance of our operations. One of those is the highly successful water management and recycling program at the Geelong Refinery, which is saving the local community over a billion litres of water each year.
 

Waste in, water out 

As with most manufacturing businesses, considerable amounts of water are used daily in our production, maintenance and administration activities. Waste management processes implemented at the Geelong Refinery since 2013, however, mean that 100 per cent of all waste water from our operations is now recycled back to the refinery for re-use, which saves water and minimises the impact on our local environment.
 
Built in partnership with Barwon Water, the Northern Water Plant is a state-of-the-art water recycling facility that combines both domestic and industrial waste water treatment. Water used in refinery processes, or ‘trade waste’, is sent to the plant, where it is mixed with domestic sewage from the northern suburbs then run through a three-stage process consisting of biological reduction, ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis.
 
Once the trade waste has been put through the treatment, it is returned to the refinery as clean water, for re-use.
 
Through this use of recycled water, the refinery has freed up more than 1.5 billion litres of water for community consumption each year, easing pressure on the local water supply.
 

The benefits flow 

The Northern Water Plant was officially opened in April 2013, with immediate results flowing through to both the community and the refinery, including:
 

• A 1.5 billion litre annual boost to Geelong's drinking water, since the refinery no longer draws on the available supply.
• High-quality, Class A recycled water available for industrial use in Geelong's northern suburbs. This water can also be used for flushing toilets, washing cars and watering gardens, as well as irrigating public spaces and sporting grounds.
• A 7 per cent reduction in the volume discharged to the ocean at the Black Rock Water Reclamation Plant.
• The allocation of recycled water to nearby sports and recreational facilities.
 


When it rains… 

Apart from re-using our own water, the Geelong Refinery treats rainwater run-off to remove any residual oil product before it’s allowed to be released into the bay. The two-step process ensures that rainwater can be safely returned to the natural environment without harm.
 
Monitoring shows that the water released to the environment is of a quality that does not impact on human health or the environment. In fact, since the implementation of our Water Master Plan, which was completed in 2007, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of the water discharged.
 
In addition to remediating rainwater and partnering in the construction of the Northern Water Plant, Viva Energy has instigated programs which have increased the amount of recycled water used at the Geelong Refinery. In 2016, 180 million litres of water were sent to the treatment plant, and our target is to use at least 90 per cent recycled water across the site.
 
In this, and many other ways, we are reducing our impact on both the environment and the local community.