Ask an average European where water comes from and chances are he’ll say “from the tap”. Having access to clean drinking water is as common place here as having access to a seemingly endless energy supply. But just as the global energy industry faces fundamental changes in the way power is generated and distributed, the water sector is experiencing a truly evolutionary leap in the way wastewater is treated. This water revolution however, is mostly hidden from plain sight and has almost gone unnoticed by the general public.

Ask an average European where water comes from and chances are he’ll say “from the tap”. Having access to clean drinking water is as common place here as having access to a seemingly endless energy supply. But just as the global energy industry faces fundamental changes in the way power is generated and distributed, the water sector is experiencing a truly evolutionary leap in the way wastewater is treated. This water revolution however, is mostly hidden from plain sight and has almost gone unnoticed by the general public.

Since 1913, treating wastewater from sewage or industrial plants involved a biological process called activated sludge, in which dirty water undergoes treatment with oxygen, bacteria and other organisms in a series of tanks, resulting in water that is clean enough to be released back into the waterways. Activated sludge plants require little energy and are cheap to run, which has established them as the preferred option for wastewater treatment for municipalities and industrial plants for nearly 100 years.

Clearly, after almost a century of activated sludge, it was time for technological progress. It appeared in the early 1980s in the form of the membrane bioreactor, or MBR: instead of relying on biology to clean the water, MBRs introduced ultrafine filters, which separated water from particles and harmful bacteria. MBRs had two main advantages over activated sludge from the start: MBR installations don’t use large water basins, so use up only a fraction of the space needed for activated sludge, and they deliver a much superior effluent quality, comparable to potable water. However, both installation and operating costs of early MBRs were higher, which was mainly due to the higher energy demand of these installations.

 

While industry with its demand for ultraclean water was quick to adopt the new technology – MBR installation figures have exploded since the turn of the millennium, though MBR technology was not as fast in penetrating the market for municipal wastewater treatment, which was mainly due to its higher lifecycle costs. However, GE engineers have been at work improving the original MBR design over the past two decades and have recently presented a leapfrog development in MBR technology: the aptly named LEAPmbr.

A LEAPmbr installation takes up around 20 percent less space than traditional MBRs, and roughly one third of that of a conventional activated sludge plant. At the same time, capital expenditure for a LEAPmbr plant is now significantly lower, with lifecycle costs equalling those of a conventional plant. Also, the effluent quality of a LEAPmbr plant continues to meet or exceed the toughest regulatory standards in the world.

Given that LEAPmbr plants are now far superior to activated sludge plants in virtually every aspect, it is only a matter of time before most activated sludge plants will be replaced by modern membrane bioreactors, fulfilling the revolutionary shift from biological to physical wastewater treatment.

 

 

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• energy efficiency
• Renewable energy
• wastewater