May 5, 2015 -- The Wakaf Bunut Water Treatment Plant, located in the state of Kelantan, Malaysia, is the country's largest riverbank filtration (RBF) and ultrafiltration (UF) facility designed for producing municipal drinking water. The plant, which is equipped with inge® UF technology, was commissioned in March 2013 and is capable of producing a maximum of up to 14 million liters of drinking water per day for the Tok Bali region.
This combined water purification method works by filtering river water through layers of sand in the riverbank as a form of pretreatment, pumping it out from a horizontal collector well and then supplying it to the UF system. In this second UF stage, tiny pores of the patented inge Multibore® membrane, which are 20 nanometers in diameter, remove all suspended solids, bacteria and viruses from the water. Even in cases where the quality of the river water varies over time, UF always yields consistently high-quality drinking water.
The plant's first two years of operation have demonstrated the success of this combination of RBF and UF. Pre-filtration through layers of sand in the riverbank has been shown to reduce the amount of suspended solids in the water by 20 to 70 percent -- a figure that varies significantly from day to day depending on the quality of the river water. This pretreatment stage improves the quality of the water fed to the downstream UF stage, enabling a more cost-effective plant design with lower capital costs. This solution also eliminates the need for chemical pretreatment of the UF feedwater. Despite using lower levels of chemicals, the inge UF modules can be operated in an efficient manner.
The quality of the UF filtrate is monitored and documented at regular intervals. The local water authorities have used the results of these analyses to evaluate the financial viability and sustainability of the combination RBF/UF solution. The combined method has therefore proved to be both technologically and financially viable. These findings should pave the way for other municipal authorities to follow suit by introducing their own combined RBF/UF solutions in the future.
See also:
"Ion exchange resins and membranes for the Asian region"
"Stormwater technology helps clean up Malaysia river"
About inge
inge GmbH, based in Greifenberg, Germany, is a provider of UF technology used in the treatment of drinking water, process water, sea water and wastewater. Its range of products includes highly-efficient UF modules and cost-effective, space-saving rack designs as the core components of water treatment plants. All the company's products are based on the in-house development of its patented Multibore membrane technology. For more information, visit www.inge.basf.com.
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