ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, April 20, 2004 -- USFilter and Bechtel-Enka are in the process of starting up a 5,667-gallons-per-minute (1,288 cubic meters per hour) water treatment system at Rijnmond Energy Center in the Netherlands.
Installed in September 2003, the water treatment plant will supply cooling tower water and boiler feed water at this new gas-fired plant, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Rotterdam.
Provided by USFilter, the water treatment system includes intake screening equipment, pre-treatment equipment, four packaged clarifier filter systems, two reverse osmosis (RO) systems, two CDI-LX(tm) continuous electrodeionization systems, condensate polishing systems, chemical feeders, solids dewatering systems, and associated pumps, tanks and controllers.
The intake screening system consists of bar racks, a grab-style trash rake and traveling water screens. Designed to meet EU standards, the screening system will remove trash and debris such as grass, seaweed and plastic bags from 27 cubic meters per minute of brackish water from a canal on the tidal Maas River.
The packaged clarifiers and filters will treat water from the adjacent canal, and the treated water will supply the plant's cooling towers and high-purity water system. The RO/CDI® system will provide high-purity water for boiler feed. System start-up is scheduled for completion in May 2004.
Says Tom Patterson, Rijnmond Energy Center project manager at Bechtel-Enka, "USFilter faced a number of challenges on this project, including making sure all the equipment conformed to the EU directives, coordinating with a number of suppliers in North America and Europe and providing us with required engineering details in a timely manner. They met those challenges."
Patterson adds, "The effluent from our plant, which will be discharged back into the canal, will be considerably cleaner than the water coming in."
When complete, the cogeneration plant will supply 790-megawatts of electricity to the surrounding power grid. It will also produce up to 350 tonnes per hour of steam to the nearby Shell Netherlands refinery.
Bechtel engineers in Frederick, Maryland, were responsible for the primary design of the plant, with Enka engineers in Istanbul, Turkey doing much of the civil design. Together, the two companies designed and constructed the plant for a subsidiary of InterGen, the Bechtel-Shell venture.
Millions of people and thousands of companies rely on USFilter every day to help them meet their clean water needs. Headquartered in Palm Desert, Calif., USFilter (www.usfilter.com) is a $1 billion water company with 6,000 experienced professionals dedicated to delivering cost-effective, reliable water and wastewater treatment systems and services to municipal, industrial, commercial and institutional customers worldwide.
