Steel industry, being one of the biggest freshwater consuming industries in China, is challenged by the lack of sufficient freshwater resources.
Currently, China's freshwater reserve per capita is around 2,200 cubic meters only far lagged behind the average global level. Among China's over 600 cities, more than 400 cities are lacking for and over 110 cities badly need freshwater. It's estimated that only the gap between the actual demand and supply of freshwater for living use in all cities is over 7.5 billion cubic meters.
Under the light of this data, accounting for 14 percent of totally 180 billion cubic meters water consumption in all industries, steel industry is under a serious threat.
Chinese mills' water recycling technology is quite below the global level with 6.56 cubic meters water consumption per ton of steel, which is almost twice of the globally advanced technology's 3.35 cubic meters average. Consequently, Chinese mills are required to engage in R&D and production of water-saving devices and technologies for steelmaking.
Due to excessive use of freshwater, and especially the under ground water, China's fresh water supply situation is getting worse. While many big cities have started to suffer from serious water cuts, also some freshwater sources cannot be used due to pollution. As one of the worst influenced cities - Tianjin city, it's reported that its 60 percent of surface water started to sink and near 90 percent of freshwater sources have been polluted to different degree.
All in all, Chinese mills either have to improve their water saving technology rapidly, otherwise they may be shut down by official authorities, as a new agenda in the future.