Veolia Water Solutions &Technologies, with its German subsidiary Krüger WABAG, wins order for new water treatment plant
Bayreuth/Germany, 17 May 2010 - The water supply association in Windesheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, has commissioned Krüger WABAG, a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, with the building of a drinking water treatment plant. When completed in mid-2011, the new plant will be the largest of its type in the world with regards to uranium removal. The project is partly funded by the Rhineland Palatinate Ministry for the Environment, Forestry and Consumer Protection.
The Trollmühle water supply association supplies about 43,000 inhabitants with some 2,000,000 m³/year of drinking water. Due to hydrogeological conditions, the raw water from the nine wells is very hard (total hardness of about 22 degrees dH) and has a nitrate content of up to 50 mg/l. In addition, it has a geologically-related uranium content of about 13 µg/l. The objective of the new plant is to ensure reliable and continual compliance with all valid limits and supply people in the distribution area with high-quality drinking water. The planned water treatment plant will use in a first stage Uranex® process to highly reduce the uranium content to values smaller than one microgram per litre. In a second stage, a Carix® partial desalination plant will considerably lower nitrate and sulphate content, as well as total and carbonate hardness, thanks to the ion exchange system method.
In addition to building the largest plant of its type in the world regarding uranium removal, Krüger Wabag, thanks to the Carix® system, will also provide environmentally friendly solutions to the area. The result will be lower energy consumption meaning lower operation costs, less wastewater produced during treatment process as well as a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. In fact, no less than 95% of the CO2 used to regenerate the ion exchanger is recovered with a vacuum system. The CO2 used comes from industry and is a treated waste product which would otherwise go directly into the atmosphere. Most of this gas is bound into concentrate and then no longer burdens the environment as a harmful greenhouse gas.
The Carix® system also reduces corrosion in metal pipelines, translating to a marked decline of copper and zinc pollution in the sewage sludge. Furthermore, there is a significantly lower entry of laundry and cleaning detergents into the environment thanks to Carix®; in Windesheim, this will represent an annual reduction of about 60 tonnes of laundry detergents, 15 tonnes of cleaning materials, 3 tonnes of soap and 4 tonnes of descaler.
According to scientific studies, the building of a partial desalination plant, with its reduction of laundry and cleaning detergents as well as lower energy consumption, represents an annual saving for the private household of about €30 per person, while the building of the plant itself creates extra costs for the private household estimated at only €15 per person and year. In addition, there is a health-enhancing effect due to the removal of the traces of uranium in drinking water.
