29 January 2019

Veolia’s technological innovations increasing access to sanitation and sewage services

Submitted by: CubicICE (PTY) Ltd
Veolia’s technological innovations increasing access to sanitation and sewage services

The plight of South Africa’s sewage treatment infrastructure is relatively well documented. Severe challenges both in maintaining South Africa’s existing sewage treatment works as well as their expansion to accommodate a growing population, means less than 10% of the country’s sewage plants currently meet compliance.

With over 50 000 L of untreated sewage estimated to flow into our rivers every second, an underperforming sewerage infrastructure poses a significant health hazard, threatens the ecology of our natural water sources, as well as increases the cost of water treatment plants to produce potable water from rivers and dams.

 For water solutions specialist Veolia Water Technologies, a new, resilient and efficient approach to sanitation resource management is required in overcoming the national backlog confronting our sewage treatment infrastructure.

A turnkey technological solution“Over the past few years, Veolia has supplied packaged wastewater treatment plants for a number of different sewage treatment applications, across South Africa and further afield into countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania,” explains Veolia Water Technologies South Africa’s Chris Braybrooke.

From meeting the needs of isolated communities, to supplying facilities like hospitals, airports and remote mining camps with adequate sewage treatment services, modular Sewage Treatment Plants (STP™) have proven a reliable, cost-effective alternative to in-ground plants, and can be supplied in a fraction of the time.

“These packaged plants are based on trickling filter technology, a simple but extremely versatile technology that is both robust and easy to operate,” Braybrooke says. “Its ability to accommodate highly variable inflows is an additional benefit, and the sludge, which is digested to approximately a third of its original volume, only has to be removed every two to three years.”

The major treatment components of the STP™ are screening, anaerobic digestion, carbon removal and nitrification, sludge removal and disinfection in a chlorine contact tank. Pre-assembled and Factory-Acceptance Tested (FAT) at the company’s Water Techno Products production facility in Sebenza, Johannesburg, Veolia’s STP™ can be manufactured to order in as little as 12 weeks, to treat domestic sewage to RSA General Standards for Discharge.

 The plants are available both as fully containerised systems, or as a hybrid system, which includes a civil-based septic tank, in a wide range of treatment capacities from 25 to 600 m3/day.

 “Plug-and-play, rapidly deployable, and with minimal installation and maintenance requirements, these off-the-shelf, packaged plants are now a critical component in our ability to meet the sewage treatment requirements of our communities in both permanent and temporary and emergency applications,” Braybrooke explains. “This is our Ambition for Africa.”

The leading reference in modular water treatmentThe STP™ is one among a complete range of packaged treatment solutions Veolia Water Technologies now supplies as part of its standard products portfolio. These innovative products also include municipal and industrial water treatment solutions for potable water production, reverse osmosis, filtration, distillation, dissolved air flotation, evaporation and more.

 These packaged solutions draw from the company’s approximately 350 proprietary technologies it has developed across its over 160-year history, including 20 years of success and innovation in Africa, which the company celebrates this year.

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