Gulf Construction Online - Inge to upgrade treatment plant

Water Technology

The UF system supplied by inge watertechnologies ... will treat 80,000 cu m of water per day.

Inge to upgrade treatment plant

01 September 2010

GERMANY'S inge watertechnologies is gearing to support measures to step up seawater and processed water treatment in the UAE with its ultrafiltration (UF) modules now set to treat 80,000 cu m of water a day at a steel plant located in Abu Dhabi.

“Since January 2009, modules supplied by inge watertechnologies have been steadily proving their worth purifying seawater from the Arabian Gulf – generally considered a hugely challenging task – and treating processed water for Emirates Steel Industries. Now the company has decided to increase the plant’s capacity, and from 2011, its water requirements are set to climb to 80,000 cu m per day.
“Water from the Gulf with its problems of high turbidity and organic and bacteriological contents, which especially surfaces during summer, creates major challenges for water treatment facilities,” explains inge’s press official Petra Erner. “Additionally, the algae bloom known as the red tide is a phenomenon that has been trouble on the coasts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”
Erner continues: “Therefore, any ultrafiltration systems used in these regions are dependant upon a high-performance, extremely resilient membrane with excellent anti-fouling properties that is capable of properly dealing with the water’s organic content. The modules supplied by inge watertechnologies have proved more than capable of meeting these requirements ever since they came online in January 2009.”
“Making sure that the membrane is highly resilient is a crucial factor, especially when it comes to a major project like the treatment of 80,000 cu m of water a day,” Erner says. “That is why the Italian plant construction firm Bernardinello Engineering chose to use the patented multibore membrane from inge watertechnologies when they built the water treatment facility for Emirates Steel Industries in Mussafah, the industrial quarter of Abu Dhabi.”
The project to expand the plant will now see a total of 574 ‘dizzer 5000 plus’ modules – each featuring a 50 sq m membrane surface area – coming online from 2011 onwards in a layout of seven racks. The job of these modules is to pretreat the seawater to prepare it for reverse osmosis. The treated water is required for the steel production process. The UF facility is also used to treat the ‘blowdown water’ from the steel work’s cooling towers.
inge watertechnologies CEO Bruno Steis comments: “The fact that inge watertechnologies offers a five-year warranty against membrane fibre breakage shows that the company’s quality claims are not just an empty promise. More than 500 plants around the globe are equipped with our patented, German-made technology. Our ultrafiltration systems have been working perfectly for more than seven years, and we have never had a single case of fibre breakage.”