Industrial Park Water Services Transformed in Mainland China: From "the Business of a Single Wastewater Treatment Plant" to "the Business of a Complete Park Water Cycle"

2026 年 9 月 3 日, Energy Conservation Guozhen announced that its consortium won the concession project for wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse in the Petrochemical Industrial Park of Zhongjie Industrial Park, Cangzhou, Hebei: total investment of approximately 2.64 亿 yuan, BOOT model, concession period of 30 年, initial unit price of wastewater treatment service fee 17.85 元/ton. More noteworthy than the amount is the procurement list — in addition to 1 万 m³/d wastewater treatment + 0.5 万 m³/d reclaimed water reuse, it also includes four types of pipelines: ordinary wastewater, high-concentration wastewater, reclaimed water conveyance, and concentrated brine discharge from the wastewater plant. How enterprises discharge water, how wastewater is collected, how treated water returns to the production system, and where the concentrated brine ultimately goes are all placed into the same 30 年 operating system.

The procurement list getting longer is the most intuitive signal

In the past, when discussing industrial park water services, attention focused on the wastewater plant itself: how large the scale is, what process is used, and what standards the effluent must meet. Now, the problem is extending to both ends of the plant.

The Zhongjie project is the most typical sample. Its construction content is clearly divided into four parts:

• Wastewater treatment works — high-salinity equalization tank, high-salinity emergency tank, air flotation unit, hydrolysis tank, anoxic tank, aerobic tank, secondary clarifier, intermediate water tank, Fenton fluidized bed, high-density sedimentation tank, denitrification deep-bed filter, disinfection tank and outfall, plus coarse screen well, influent pumping station, fine screen and vortex grit chamber, low-concentration equalization tank and emergency tank.
• Sludge treatment works — sludge thickening tank, sludge conditioning tank, sludge dewatering room.
• Reclaimed water reuse works — clear water tank, clear water pump, Ultrafiltration, security filter, activated coke, Reverse Osmosis unit, EDI feed pump, EDI unit, product water tank, demineralized water pump. The endpoint is demineralized water, directly reused in production processes and boiler make-up water.
• Auxiliary pipeline network — ordinary wastewater collection pipeline, high-concentration wastewater collection pipeline, reclaimed water conveyance pipeline, concentrated brine discharge pipeline from the wastewater plant.

The key to this list is that ordinary wastewater and high-concentration wastewater must be collected separately, reclaimed water must be conveyed independently, and the concentrated brine produced by membrane treatment must also have a clear destination. Whether the in-plant process can operate stably increasingly depends on whether different water streams can be separated, managed, and delivered to the correct locations outside the plant.

The difficulty pricing behind 17.85 元/ton

The figure of 17.85 元/ton needs to be read against the water quality background. The predecessor of Zhongjie Industrial Park was a state-owned farm established in 1956 年, and in 2022 年 it was incorporated into the five major functional park system of Huanghua City, Cangzhou Bohai New Area, focusing on deep petroleum processing, fine chemicals, and specialty chemicals. Its production wastewater generally exhibits characteristics of being high-salinity, high-concentration, and refractory, making it a recognized high-difficulty industrial wastewater scenario in the industry.

The main process line given by Energy Conservation Guozhen is a full-chain closed loop of "precise front-end pretreatment — mid-end biochemical coupling with advanced oxidation — back-end membrane deep purification and reuse," corresponding to "quality-based collection, graded treatment, and cascade reuse." Industry estimates suggest that the complexity of wastewater components in petrochemical parks can reach 5—8 times that of municipal wastewater. Conventional processes often need to be combined with multiple units such as catalytic ozonation, membrane concentration, and evaporative crystallization, and the energy consumption and chemical costs per ton of water are significantly higher than those of municipal projects.

In terms of the payment mechanism, 30 年 BOOT (Build—Own—Operate—Transfer) means that the investor not only builds the plant but also holds asset ownership and remains responsible for effluent indicators over the long term. This is completely different from the responsibility structure of traditional BOT, in which "the project is transferred upon completion and operations are handed to a third party" — and precisely for this reason, it is called the first industrial park concession BOOT project under the country's new PPP mechanism.

The same trend appears in different parks in different ways

Zhongjie is not an isolated case. Looking at recent park projects across various regions together, the direction of change is highly consistent.

• Taixing, Jiangsu — extending management reach directly to enterprise discharge outlets. Data disclosed by 2026 年 shows that 117 enterprises in the park have been connected to the wastewater treatment plant, achieving traceability at the source through "one enterprise, one pipe"; the "source—network—plant—river" system integrates enterprise discharge, time-phased and categorized collection, centralized advanced treatment, and terminal ecological safety buffer zones into a unified whole. The project company was jointly established by a China Communications Construction-related platform, CCCC First Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd., and Suez.
• Baishihu Industrial Park, Hami, Xinjiang — 2026 年 has entered the construction completion stage, with a dedicated collection pipeline network covering park enterprises planned in parallel. Enterprises complete pretreatment before connecting to the main pipeline network, and the park conducts unified advanced treatment. This is a typical approach under the "new construction scenario."
• Wulongkou, Ruian, Longyou — enabling reclaimed water to re-enter the production system, upgrading reuse from "landscaping irrigation" to "process make-up water."
• Yulin, Hami — focusing on resolving the destination of high-salinity water and concentrate, with concentrated brine disposal becoming a prerequisite for whether the project can achieve closed-loop operation.
• Ningdong and other industrial parks — using digital platforms to uniformly manage water quantity, quality, and operations, turning operational data into management assets.

These projects differ in scale, industry, and business model, but they all point to one thing: project boundaries are extending to twice the size of the wastewater treatment plant.

Three Emerging Incremental Directions

As the procurement list grows longer, market space shifts accordingly. Currently, the incremental growth is mainly concentrated in three areas.

• Traceability of the off-site water network — "one enterprise, one pipe," quality-based collection, and online metering essentially press discharge responsibility down to the enterprise end. This brings sustained demand for monitoring instruments, data acquisition, and traceability systems, and represents a long-term operational-phase payment item rather than one-time engineering revenue.
• Reclaimed water entering the production system — from miscellaneous reuse to process make-up water and boiler make-up water, water quality requirements jump from "compliance" to "demineralized water," making Ultrafiltration + Reverse Osmosis + EDI the standard configuration, with membrane replacement and O&M forming a stable aftermarket.
• Categorized treatment of high-salinity concentrate — membrane processes inevitably produce concentrate. Salt separation, evaporative crystallization, and resource recovery from concentrated brine are the final hurdle determining whether the park can truly achieve closed-loop operation, and also the segment with the highest technical barriers and strongest pricing power.

The division of labor among different players is also becoming clearer: platform-type enterprises integrate system planning and operational responsibility, while specialized enterprises build irreplaceable capabilities in high-value modules (salt separation, monitoring, energy consumption optimization).

Our Assessment

TIANYI TECH Co., Ltd. has long provided wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse system solutions for municipal and industrial park clients. We believe that the competitive focus of industrial park water services has shifted from "whose process is more advanced" to "who can manage the water outside the plant." Three suggestions for parks and investors: First, solidify discharge-side categorization before determining the process — the quality of quality-based collection determines the operational stability of all downstream units, and investment saved at this step will be repaid doubly during the operational phase; Second, the destination of concentrate must be determined before treatment scale, otherwise the larger the capacity, the greater the risk; Third, build a cash flow model across the full 30 年 lifecycle, amortizing membrane replacement, energy consumption, and chemicals over the full cycle rather than only calculating construction-phase investment. Industrial park water services are shifting from "selling equipment" to "managing the water network," and those who transform early will capture this round of structural dividends.

About TIANYI TECH Co., Ltd. (TIANYI LIMITED): TIANYI TECH Co., Ltd. is deeply engaged in the field of wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse, committed to providing efficient, low-carbon, and sustainable water treatment solutions for municipal and industrial clients.