Water technology solutions provider Veolia Water Technologies South Africa (SA) recently reported that it provided an energy efficient, low maintenance packaged water treatment plant to supply an additional 5 Mℓ/d of potable water to two villages in Limpopo.

Veolia was contracted by Lepelle Northern Water Board to augment its existing water supply from its Politsi Water Treatment Plant, which, although producing 5.5 Mℓ/d of high-quality potable water from turbid raw water, still saw it unable to meet the growing water demands of the surrounding communities.

In addition, the plant has been experiencing drastic on-site space constraints and is unable to expand its existing treatment plant by conventional processes.

Meanwhile, Veolia was contracted to design and build a fully containerised water treatment plant capable of supplying 5 Mℓ/d of potable water and increasing the overall water supply to 10.5 Mℓ/d for the surrounding villages.

Meanwhile, Veolia used its tried-and-tested prefabricated clarification and pressurised filtration technology, together with a range of chemicals.

“In this process, raw water is fed through a pumpstation to the packaged clarifiers where it is dosed with polymers and coagulants to enhance flocculation and coagulation,” says Veolia municipal business development manager Thabo Mogadima.

“This chemically dosed raw water will enter the clarifier, where the floc particles, which resulted from the flocculation and coagulation process, will settle in the clarifier. This is followed by a pressurised sand filtration process and finally the water is disinfected using hydrochloride acid,” she explains.

According to Mogadima, Veolia will use pH correction chemicals to correctly adjust the pH level to comply with SANS 241-1:2011.

“This treated water is then combined with the 5.5 Mℓ/d produced from the existing plant in an underground reservoir from where it is pumped to the villages,” she notes.

Mogadima explains that the company’s packaged plants offer rugged, low maintenance performance and are particularly suited to remote locations. “The low-footprint plant was also preassembled at our Sebenza workshop and simply needed to be mounted on a concrete slab, ’plugged in and switched on’ when it arrived on site in February this year.”

Veolia will also conduct on-site training for the municipality, as well as offer 12-month on-call response for problems that may arise at the plant.

About Veolia

Veolia group is the “global leader” in optimised resource management. With more than 174 000 employees worldwide, it designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions that contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them.

In 2015, the Veolia group supplied 100million people with drinking water and 63-million people with wastewater services, produced 63-million megawatt hours of energy and converted 42.9-million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy.