Recently, seeking ways to alleviate the
extreme water shortage in the regions,
the City of Cape Town came out with a
request for information, as Patricia de
use the Pall filter system. Presently,
in Switzerland, there are four fully
equipped container systems waiting for
deployment to Cape Town. However,
there has not been any response from
the City, as yet, despite continual
communication from us.”
The South African trend appears
to be to panic when there is a water
crisis looming, which quickly turns into
a frenzied hunt for a solution (normally
desalination), which is then put on the
back burner and forgotten when the
rains come.
Herbst comments on the recent
implementation of water restrictions in
George — a repeat of 2010 — when the
company undertook substantial work
in the town to alleviate the water crisis.
“The equipment we supplied to the town
in 2010 we commissioned two months
ago, because now they have a problem
again,” he says with mild disbelief.
Water Sewage & Effluent September/October 2017
39
All talk …
Lille, the executive mayor, announced
the City’s Water Resilience Plan, which
includes a number of augmentation
schemes, including desalination, water
reuse, and groundwater extraction.
The aim is to drive down collective
usage to 500Mℓ/day, as well as to
safeguard always having at least 500Mℓ/
day of water in production.
Over 100 submissions were
received, proposing solutions including
desalination at various scales, inclusive
of container solutions, barges, and
ships; water reuse technology at various
scales; aquifer and borehole options;
engineering and infrastructure options;
and water demand management options,
among others. Prei/Hach submitted their
proposal for the Pall filtration system.
Herbst explains: “While the
original interest was for desalination,
our recommendation was to rather
“When you calculate the capacity
against the cost, per litre, per day, it is
almost what the municipality charges
the end-user presently. While the
municipalities may not be able to supply
as much as required, the plants will feed
straight into the network,” he adds.
Herbst comments on the water crisis
in the Cape and says that although Cape
Town has a major water issue, they have
excellently run water treatment plants.
“However, with our system, they could
run the effluent straight through the Pall
filters and into the water reticulation
system, instead of into the rivers,”
he says.
The Pall filters operate with direct intake, with no pre-treatment requiring chemical addition.