China’s Jiangsu Province cleans up wastewater with Siemens

Warrendale, Pa.-based Siemens Water Technologies said today it has commissioned a wastewater treatment system for the Wuxi Xincheng Plant in China's Jiangsu Province.

The system includes Siemens’ membrane biological reactor system, which offers an upgrade to the plant’s existing wastewater treatment technology. Financial details were not disclosed.

Siemens Water Technologies is a division of Munich, Germany-based Siemens (NYSE:SI), one of the world's largest electronics and industrial engineering firms.

With wastewater treatment plants in China under pressure to meet stricter water treatment requirements, the plant is producing 30,000 cubic meters per day of high quality effluent, which meets national standards and can safely be discharged into Taihu Lake, Siemens said (see China’s polluted lakes hold potential for cleantech). The system took about a year to complete.

The province is working to improve sewage treatment capacities in cities surrounding the lake, which has become increasingly polluted in recent years. The plant serves more than 100 high tech enterprises in the Wuxi New District’s industrial park, which has experienced a more than 20 percent annual increase in wastewater.

The membrane biological reactor system combines conventional biological treatment processes with Siemens’ membrane filtration technology. Siemens said it can help to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in the treated effluent by breaking down organic nutrients and filtering the solids.

The system, which has been installed in more than 70 facilities worldwide, also takes up about 75 percent less space, compared to conventional technology.

In September, Siemens signed a RMB 42 million ($6.2 million) contract to provide a biological nutrient removal system to Tianjin Capital Environmental Protection Group in China. The system was to be used at the Tianjin Xianyang Road Wastewater Treatment Plant in Tianjin, China. It was expected to treat 450,000 cubic meters per day and help improve the plant’s effluent discharge (see Siemens to upgrade Chinese wastewater treatment plant).

Siemens has said that water treatment technologies are an important component of its environmental portfolio, which had €19 billion ($27.9 billion) in revenue in 2008, or a quarter of its total revenue (see Siemens expects to boost cleantech revenues).

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