Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa helps upgrade sugar refinery Johannesburg, June 06 2012 – Leading water and wastewater expert and a subsidiary of Veolia Water, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa was contracted to design, install and commission a reverse osmosis (RO) plant for one of South Africa’s largest sugar manufacturers based in KwaZulu-Natal. The project formed part of an upgrade of the refinery’s off crop refining capabilities. Cane is milled for about nine months of the year, with most of the process water attained from the moisture in the cane. During off crop season, no cane is milled or raw sugar produced, but the refining process continues. Steam from the boiler is required for this process, and the additional water needed for this purpose thus has to be obtained from the onsite boreholes.

“There was a set of softeners in place to remove the hardness of the borehole water, but these were becoming obsolete and could not cope with the demand. Additionally, the client had to occasionally chemically clean the boiler at great cost as a result of the inadequate softener system. The requirement was to design a complete new system in order to deliver sufficient quality and quantity of industrial water to feed the boiler,” explains Warrick Sanders, Project Engineer, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa.

The feed water for the plant is supplied from a borehole, which gets filtered through iron removal filters, before undergoing softening through the client’s existing softeners. In the next treatment step, the water is passed through an ultra-filtration unit to reduce the SDI (silt density index) of the water. From the ultra-filtration unit, the water is fed to the RO units, from which the good quality permeate water is fed into a holding tank, and the brine to a slave RO tank.

Additional good quality permeate water is recovered from the slave RO which is fed by this tank. All RO permeate, at a capacity of 90 to 100 m³/hour, is pumped to the client’s tank. Veolia supplied two iron removal filters, four holding tanks, two ultra-filtration trains installed on skids, three RO skids, various pumping equipment and in-line measuring instruments, as well as the Hydrex™ range of chemicals. “The project posed a challenge due to a fixed deadline. Certain standard equipment was imported from our sister companies, Aquafab in Spain (three RO skids) and Berkefeld in Germany (two ultra-filtration skids), to save on manufacturing time, but due to shipping delays, the timeline was very tight,” says Sanders. Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa provided most of the training, and will be assisting with follow-up chemical supply and plant services in the future.

The plant was commissioned in April 2011. Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, subsidiary of Veolia Water, is a leading design & build company and a specialized provider of technological solutions in water treatment. With 10,767 employees, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies recorded revenue of €2.315 billion in 2011.

www.veoliawaterst.com

Veolia Water, the water division of Veolia Environnement, is the world leader in water and wastewater services. Specialized in outsourcing services for municipal authorities, as well as industrial and service companies, it is also one of the world’s major designers of technological solutions and constructor of facilities needed in water and wastewater services. With 96,651 employees in 69 countries, Veolia Water provides water service to 103 million people and wastewater service to 73 million. Its 2011 revenue amounted to €12.617 billion. www.veoliawaterst.com Caption (Picture 1 VWS 3045 Sugar) The reverse osmosis skids used at the Veolia RO plant to help produce process water during off crop season, when sufficient process water cannot be recovered from sugar cane processing.

Enquiries
Gunter Rencken Managing Director Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa (Pty) Ltd
Tel: 011 663 3600 Fax: 011 608 4772
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

From: CubicICE (Pty) Ltd (011) 705 2545

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Zelda Onay This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Compiled: Machteld Minnaar PR: PR VWS 3045 Noodsberg