BEIJING, China, Sept. 22, 2008 -- The Chinese city of Wuxi, in Jiangsu province, has selected Siemens to provide a solution to treat municipal wastewater and help restore the water quality of Taihu Lake. An important water source for 30 million people, the lake has been heavily polluted by municipal sewage and industrial wastewater. The solution from Siemens will include a Membrane Biological Reactor (MBR) system for the upgrading of Wuxi Xincheng Wastewater Treatment Plant, one of the city's three main wastewater treatment plants. The MBR system will treat 30,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day, and will play an important role in helping the city to treat more than 90 percent of its wastewater by 2010. The system is scheduled for commissioning at the end of 2008.
As part of its efforts to clean up Taihu Lake, Jiangsu province issued what is considered to be the strictest wastewater treatment standard in China. The province also set out to improve sewage treatment capacities in cities surrounding the lake area. The MBR system will allow the Xincheng plant to better serve over 100 high tech enterprises in the Wuxi New District's industrial park, which has experienced a 20 to 25 percent annual increase in wastewater.
Siemens' MBR system integrates Siemens' innovative Memcor membranes and the conventional wastewater treatment process. This system can significantly reduce both nitrogen and phosphor in the treated effluent by breaking down the organic nutrients and filtering the solids. The MBR will enable the Xincheng plant to produce high quality effluent that exceeds the national discharge standard of Class I-A, and will allow the effluent to be safely discharged to Taihu Lake or meet local requirements for reuse water.
As a leading global supplier of water and wastewater treatment products and services, Siemens Water Technologies has provided more than 70 MBR facilities worldwide. One of these is the MBR system at the Beixiaohe Wastewater Treatment Plant in Beijing, which helped provide reuse water for the Olympic Park, and is currently one of the largest systems of its kind in the world.
"Water protection in China is a big challenge," comments Dr. Henrik Alt, General Manager of Siemens Water Technologies in China. "The upgrading project of Wuxi Xincheng Waste Water Treatment Plant will help Wuxi to realize sustainable development, and will set new environmental and operational benchmarks in the water treatment industry."
With the business activities of Siemens VAI Metal Technologies, (Linz, Austria), Siemens Water Technologies (Warrendale, Pa., U.S.A.), and Industry Technologies, (Erlangen, Germany), the Siemens Industry Solutions Division (Erlangen, Germany) is one of the world's leading solution and service providers for industrial and infrastructure facilities.
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