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It is a 43 million euro project signed yesterday in Ferrara which will make the petrochemical hub’s water system the largest green intervention for the recovery and reuse of industrial water in Italy and one of the first in Europe: it will reduce water withdrawals by 53%. water from the Po river, from the current 17 million m3/year to 8 million, thus freeing 9 million m3 of water for agricultural and drinking uses. This is the main work within a broader protocol for the valorisation of the industrial and technological center of Ferrara in the name of ecological transition and energy efficiency, which will move around fifty million euros between public and private resources and which brought together all the economic, institutional and social forces of the Estense province, the Region and the two ministries of the Environment (Mase) and of Business and Made in Italy (Mimit): 16 signatures on a historic agreement, after the two previous protocols of 2001 and 2008 on the Estense petrochemical industry, «which marks the finish line of two years of system work in our territory and at the same time is the starting point for attracting new production facilities here, creating employment, enhancing the areas of the chemical and contribute to bringing Ferrara out of the current isolation, thanks also to the arrival of the simplified logistics zone and infrastructures such as the Cispadana which finally seem to be unlocked”, underlines the mayor Alan Fabbri, leader of the initiative.
The site
The Ferrara petrochemical plant is a 250-hectare citadel a stone’s throw from the city centre, with over 100 hectares available for new settlements, 40 km of roads and 10 of railways, where 2,450 people work every day, including employees of the nine companies present and those of the supply chain (including the multinationals Eni with its subsidiaries Versalis, Sef, Rewind; Basell Poliolefine Italia; Yara) and where plastic, rubber, catalysts, technopolymers and electricity are produced, strategic “ingredients” of Italian manufacturing chains, from automotive to biomedical, from packaging to textiles. A chemistry that is becoming increasingly critical today when dependence on foreign countries is a vulnerability and there is a green challenge to be resolved very quickly.
The theme of water
«The fundamental activity of those like us who manage the petrochemical utilities is linked to water, we are talking about 2,400 m3/hour of resource taken from the Po with the permission to reach 3,200 m3/hour», explains Paolo Schiavina, CEO of the consortium IFM to which all the established companies belong. An enormous quantity of water, which in dry periods represents one hundredth of the entire flow of the Great River, and for this reason saving on the water cycle, through the recovery and reuse of all process and rainwater, is fundamental, especially in full of the climate crisis. «We have already renovated the water treatment plant that goes into the Hera sewerage network (2.5 million euros) and we are now carrying out the first step of the revamping of the water cycle, which will last a couple of years, thanks to 25 million of euros allocated by the member companies of the consortium to purify and clean the process water, without ever stopping the petrochemical plant for a day. The resources of Mimit and Mase and, in perspective of the EU, will allow us to complete the investment by halving not only the withdrawals from the Po but the energy consumption for collection and pumping”, explains Schiavina.
The institutions
«This agreement is a virtuous model of an Italian system that works when all administrations move in unison to create the conditions for sustainable development, an example which is valid both for chemistry and for the steel industry – underlines the Minister of Mase , Adolfo Urso, before signing the agreement – and to reaffirm the industrial primacy of our country. We must invest in the Italian and European entrepreneurial system and protect it from other production systems that do not apply the same environmental and social standards. And we must focus on chemistry and steel, which seem like sectors of the past and instead are the sectors of the future, because the strategic supply chains of Made in Italy depend on them”.
The memorandum of understanding of the Ferrara hub, one of the first three chemical sites in the country, provides for five other lines of green interventions, including photovoltaic panels, energy efficiency of buildings and production cycles, recovery of secondary raw materials, with the aim of cut 350 thousand tons of CO2 per year.