South Korea's Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy said on 21 September 2026 that it will sign a "sustainable industrial water management and water positive cooperation agreement" with Posco at the Posco Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, the following day, with the steelmaker set to recycle cooling water that had previously been discharged as wastewater and to have the resulting water savings certified as water positive outcomes (헤럴드경제).
Key takeaways
- Posco and the Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy will sign a "water positive" MOU at the Posco Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on 22 September 2026 (헤럴드경제).
- Posco will monitor cooling water quality in real time and apply treatment processes including membrane filtration to expand reuse of water that previously failed quality standards and was discharged as wastewater (헤럴드경제).
- The cooling water reuse scheme will be piloted on five of Posco's cooling towers next year, with expansion to 20 towers planned by 2028 (헤럴드경제).
- Korea Water Resources Corporation will analyse water consumption, reuse volumes, output, factory operation rates and water balance, and will calculate and verify the water restoration figures (헤럴드경제).
- The ministry has run a water positive partnership with domestic companies and public institutions since 2024, and plans to extend the model to water-intensive industries including semiconductors and steel (헤럴드경제).
What happened
Under the agreement, Posco plans to maximise the reuse of cooling water that had previously been discharged as wastewater because it failed to meet certain quality standards, applying real-time cooling water quality monitoring and treatment processes including membrane filtration to lift more of that stream back into the reuse circuit (헤럴드경제). The volume of intake water saved through cooling water reuse will be calculated and certified as water restoration, with Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water) handling data analysis, the calculation of water restoration volumes and third-party verification, while the ministry certifies the figures after expert review and oversees policy support (헤럴드경제).
Posco will apply the approach initially to five of its cooling towers in 2027, then expand to 20 towers by 2028, and will review the results before deciding on additional sites (헤럴드경제). The ministry, which has run a water positive partnership with domestic companies and public institutions since 2024, said it plans to expand the model to other water-intensive industries such as semiconductors and steel, with the goal of encouraging voluntary corporate investment in water conservation and reuse (헤럴드경제).
"To sustain the growth of advanced industries and respond to climate change, it is essential to ensure a stable water supply while also using water more efficiently at industrial sites," said Song Ho-seok, director general of water management policy at the ministry. "We will support companies so that their voluntary investment in water conservation and reuse translates into tangible water restoration outcomes, and we will work to spread water positive activities across the broader industrial sector" (헤럴드경제).
Specification read
The reported scope is a process retrofit on existing cooling-water circuits rather than a new end-of-pipe treatment plant: five cooling towers in 2027, scaling to 20 towers by 2028, with real-time monitoring and membrane filtration on a stream that today is sent to wastewater because it does not meet reuse quality (헤럴드경제). No daily flow, mass-balance figure or influent concentration is reported for the cooling-water stream, so the throughput in m³/day cannot be calculated from the source — a class range for a large integrated steelworks cooling-water recycle loop is around a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of m³/day per tower (general industry range, not from the sources). The treatment train this class of project requires runs screening → softening/side-stream filtration → biological polishing only if organics are present → tertiary membrane filtration (UF/RO) → disinfection, with the membrane filtration stage the explicit focus of the Posco scheme. For plant managers and procurement leads evaluating a cooling-water reuse retrofit on a steel, power or large-process cooling loop with discharge conductivity, silica or hardness constraints, the procurement signal is monitoring instrumentation plus a packaged membrane skid sized to the cooling-tower make-up demand, backed by a K-water-style mass-balance and verification protocol so that intake savings can be turned into a certified water-restoration credit. HydropureWater builds the kind of packaged membrane and packaged recycle skids typically specified for this duty; see the Mbr Membrane Systems range and the Industries We Serve hub for the typical cooling-tower and steel-mill configurations. Where the project also has to control drift, aerosol or blowdown chemistry around the towers, the Air Dust Treatment product family is the adjacent scope. For a worked example of how a packaged membrane system is specified for a single-site reuse duty, see this packaged MBR STP buyer's guide, and for the broader effluent treatment plant engineering frame see this effluent treatment plant engineering guide.
FAQ
What exactly is Posco doing under the 21 September 2026 announcement?
Posco has agreed with South Korea's Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy to monitor cooling water in real time and apply treatment processes including membrane filtration so that water previously discharged as wastewater can be reused, with the saved intake certified as water restoration (헤럴드경제).
How many cooling towers are in the first phase and the planned roll-out?
The scheme will be applied to five of Posco's cooling towers next year, with expansion to 20 towers planned by 2028; further sites depend on a performance review (헤럴드경제).
Who verifies the water savings and how is the certification handled?
Korea Water Resources Corporation will analyse water consumption, reuse volumes, output, factory operation rates and water balance, calculate the water restoration figures and verify them, with the ministry issuing formal certification after expert review (헤럴드경제).
What does this mean for a buyer scoping a similar cooling-water reuse retrofit?
It frames the procurement package as instrumentation plus a packaged membrane skid, with a documented mass-balance and verification protocol so intake savings become a creditable asset; typical industrial cooling-tower reuse skids run from a few hundred m³/day on a single tower to several thousand m³/day on a multi-tower system (general industry range, not from the sources).
