Tie-up to look at cheaper way of recycling water

Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 19 Feb 08;

PILOT tests aimed at producing recycled water more cheaply will start in April.

The work will be done by Japanese companies Nitto Denko and Mitsubishi Rayon Engineering on the grounds of the Bedok Water Reclamation Plant (WRP), following an agreement signed yesterday with national water agency PUB.

Each cubic metre of Newater, as Singapore's reclaimed water has been named, is now being sold to industries at $1.

The two companies and PUB say it is still too early to predict how much cheaper reclaiming used water will become.

If the pilot is successful, new membrane bioreactors could eventually do away with massive aeration and sedimentation tanks now used at the production plants.

Just over 1 per cent of Singapore's daily water consumption is now made up of Newater. By 2011, this will be increased to 2.5 per cent, or at least 7.5 million gallons per day.

The membrane bioreactors developed by the two companies merge conventional filter systems, which separate dirt from pure water, with biological ones, which use waste-eating bacteria, PUB chief executive Khoo Teng Chye explained.

Combining the two parts of the process promises to lower Newater's production cost. Because this new technology is housed in a more compact unit, space saving of 40 per cent is expected, said Nitto Denko regional manager James Iong.

Bedok WRP, for example, occupies 30ha - about three times the size of VivoCity.

'Removing bulky equipment helps land-scarce Singapore and offers great potential for rural areas, say in China and India, which don't have access to clean water,' said Mr Iong.

Speaking for the two Japanese companies, Nitto Denko's global head of the membrane division, Mr Minoru Kikuoka, said: 'The advantage of doing this in Singapore is that once we are successful in the pilot tests, PUB will allow us to show how the technology works on a larger scale.'

Mr Iong said that, at that point, the companies will run about 10,000 cu m of water a day through a demonstration plant before commercialisation, which they aim to do in April next year.

The effort places the companies in the running to come up with the gold standard in water reclamation.