Waterleau, a Belgium-based company specializing in water, air and waste treatment, and energy recovery applications, placed three orders for PURON modules from Koch Membrane Systems (KMS). The membrane bioreactor (MBR) units will process municipal and industrial wastewater in applications in Belgium and China
The two plants in Belgium operate in sites that produce sustainable energy sources. One project is for an industrial customer to produce biodiesel from soy and rapeseed oil. Waterleau proposed its Atlantis MBR technology, which uses PURON modules, to upgrade an existing wastewater treatment plant to the future load without having to modify existing civil structures. The modules will process a flow up to 720 m3/d, increasing plant capacity to 1.8 tonnes COD/d.
The other Belgium plant is a waste-to-energy facility where potato and vegetable waste is converted into energy by biological fermentation. The wet fraction is polished by an Atlantis MBR wastewater treatment system, again using PURON modules.
It will be operational early next year with a capacity to produce 1.6MW of electrical power. The dry fraction will be further dried to 95% solids and refined into high quality fertilizer granules.
The China project is KMS’s first large-scale municipal MBR project in that rapidly growing market. PURON modules were chosen for a municipal sewage treatment plant to process 12,000 m3/d of municipal wastewater that contains a considerable volume of industrial wastewater from nearby textile works.
The MBR process was chosen over a sequential batch reactor (SBR) to achieve a very high quality effluent. The plant is compact and completely covered, thus minimizing environmental emissions.
Drinking water for Algeria, Libya
Germany’s KSB Group is supplying pump equipment in Algeria and Libya to augment water supplies.
In a €5 million order in Algiers, KSB Belgium supplied a pumping station to supply the city and province of Tizi Ouzou Kabylie with drinking water. The end customer is the national Water Utility Authority of Algeria (ANBT). Delivery included six RDLO 700-980 pump sets and various valves, surge vessels and matching control systems. Each pumps is designed for a discharge head of 60 metres and driven by a 1,350 kW three-phase motor. With all five main units running, the plant reaches a flow rate of over 7,000 lps. The pumping station, which started normal operation in May, is in the Algerian part of the Atlas mountains, in a place called Taksebt. An artificial lake of the same name stores about 100 million m3 of water, which is treated in the pumping station and transported to coast via two 100km pipes.
In a €75 million order, the C319 pumping station built in Benghazi, Libya, under KSB leadership went on stream in June after over four years of construction. KSB supplied seven water transport pumps and numerous valves, the largest with a diameter of 2,800mm. It also featured 7-metre-long carbon couplings to transmit drive power of the 2.3MW motors, about 320 metres of steel pipe, and a surge control system with eight accumulators each with a volume of 250 m3, a compressor plant, diesel generators and a chlorination plant. The station pumps water from the Omar Mukhtar Reservoir in Suluq/Benghazi to the recently completed Al Khadra North East Reservoir 16km away.
South Africa attractive for industrial and chemical water treatment, desalination projects – report
The need for legislative compliance, complex industrial requirements and increasing costs of raw water have made investments in water and wastewater treatment equipment legally and economically viable in South Africa, say new reports from Frost & Sullivan – including “South African Industrial Water and Wastewater Treatment Equipment Market End-User Analysis”.
“The South African industrial market for water and wastewater treatment equipment is growing at an annual average growth rate of over 8%,” says research analyst Moses Duma. “This is driven by increasing pressure on companies to manage their environment responsibly, operations which demand clean and high quality water, and industrial growth of over 5%.”
The majority of South Africa’s industrial water users have embarked on substantial investments to upgrade or expand existing water and wastewater treatment equipment as well as install new water treatment plants.
This opens new market opportunities for servicing existing equipment as well as outsourcing of water and wastewater treatment functions.
Still, the move by industrial water users towards water and wastewater treatment is being hampered by the prohibitive costs of most equipment.
It’s also restrained by an unwillingness of decision makers to adopt new technology and a shortage of skills to operate complex technology.
Two more reports –”South and East African Water and Wastewater Chemical Treatment Markets” and “Southern, East African and African Indian Ocean Island Desalination Plant Markets” – underscore other opportunities, the first noting market revenues of $126.5 million in 2006 that are estimated to reach $239.6 million in 2013.
Field Notes
SPAIN: Energy Recovery Inc. won contracts for the largest desalination plants in Spain. The Torrevieja Desalination Plant, in Alicante Spain, has a capacity of 240,000 m3/day of potable water. Spain’s largest SWRO facility, also considered one of the largest in the world, will be built with PX Pressure Exchanger (PX) Technology. The Barcelona Desalination Plant, providing 200,000 m3/day, also will be equipped with ERI’s energy recovery devices.
UK: Water customers can be assured supplies are secure, according to Ofwat’s “Security of Supply 2006-07” report. Across the industry, leakage fell for the third year and lost water is now a third lower than its 1994 peak. Only Severn Trent failed to meet its leakage target and it has given Ofwat a binding undertaking to fix this and meet future targets. After similar action against Thames Water last year, the company beat its 2006-07 leakage target by 20 Ml/d.
UAE: With its SeaGuard membranes
chosen for pretreatment at the seawater RO plants, Norit X-Flow’s Airlift MBR technology also will be used on the Palm Jumeirah Island in Dubai. Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies won the contract to upgrade an existing conventional wastewater treatment plant to >500% of original capacity with Norit’s MBR technology. Average wastewater generated on the island crescent is estimated at17,000 m3/day. Treated effluent will be used for irrigation or influent to polishing plants to produce make-up water for the district cooling system.
RUSSIA: Viking Johnson FlexLock and UltraGrip couplings were supplied for connecting filtration pipework in St. Petersburg’s Northern Water Treatment Works. One of the Russian Federation’s biggest water treatment plants, it’s being modernized and expanded to a capacity of 1,275 Ml/d. The project is part of a comprehensive upgrading of the water and wastewater facilities serving the city’s 5 million inhabitants. It has been commissioned by water utility Vodokanal and is the first in Russia certified to ISO 14001.
GERMANY: Siemens Water Technologies received an order from the Berliner Wasserbetriebe worth €5.8 million for migration of process control systems in five purification plants. The project is scheduled for completion by August 2010 without interruptions to operations. The German utility handles supply and disposal of water for the Berlin metropolitan area. The automation system, involving 100 PLCs, will be upgraded to Siemens’ Simatic PCS 7 system.
UK: As part of a joint venture with Morrison Construction, Earth Tech Inc. won a £5.2 million contract by Yorkshire Water to upgrade the Albert Water Treatment Plant. The enterprise will install a new Magnetic Ion Exchange (MIEX) System to increase the plant’s efficiency and lower operating costs. The system works by filtering water to remove manganese and reducing color and organic compounds before distribution. This will be the first UK MIEX installation, but the process has been used in Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
