Beijing Capital International Airport reuses wastewater with ultrafiltrationtechnology from German inge AG
Posted: Wednesday 10th October 2007
Up to 10,000m3/day of municipal wastewater will be treated for reuse in toilet flushing, vehicle washing, plant irrigation and road cleaning.
When millions of sportsmen and women, tourists and media professionals rush to the new Beijing Capital International Airport during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, they will use water purified by dizzer® Multibore® ultrafiltration (UF) membrane modules manufactured and supplied by inge AG, a membrane specialist based in Greifenberg, Germany.
In August 2007, inge was awarded a contract to supply its patented membrane technology for the wastewater reuse project of the new Beijing Capital International Airport. The total treatment capacity is 10,000 m3/day, which is the daily water consumption of about 20,000 people. The UF system using inge’s technology serves as pre-treatment to a reverse osmosis system to treat Beijing’s municipal wastewater. The treated water will be supplied to office buildings at the airport and toilets in the Airport Hotel; it will also be used to wash vehicles, irrigate plants, clean roads and provide cooling recirculation water.
BejingCapitalInternationalAirportis a showcase
Beijing is China’s showcase, since it is the political, cultural and financial centre of the country. As one of the top 10 airports in the world and the largest in China, Beijing Capital International Airport is the gateway to the capital. It transports 50 million passengers per year and is the most important port to deliver passengers and goods for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, thus its extension and renovation is one of the major construction projects of the Beijing Olympic Games. It is also part of the environmental, green and healthy Olympic Games concept promoted by Beijing and China. “Winning a project which is related to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games will significantly upgrade the brand and image of inge”, says Mareike Schmidt, head of inge China operations. “As the Chinese want their new airport to be an outstanding project not only in design – from a bird’s eye view it is shaped like a dragon - but also in terms of state-of-the-art technology, the award of this project is evidence for the growing acceptance worldwide of our technology in the water purification market.”
As an international UF membrane specialist that operates throughout the world, inge has been in China for a quite few years. The water quality in China varies widely all over the country, and the Northern part is especially known for the scarcity of its water resources. The amount of daily wastewater capacity in China is estimated to be 3.7 billion m3. Approximately 10,000 wastewater treatment plants are needed to treat only 50 percent of this large amount. The scarcity of freshwater sources and the fact that it is cheaper to reuse wastewater than to buy expensive municipal drinking water opens a large market for the German inge AG.
inge AG at a glance
The internationally active inge AG has its headquarters located in Greifenberg near Munich, Germany. The company manufactures and sells ultrafiltration membranes and modules for the treatment of drinking water, process water and wastewater. It is the largest ultrafiltration company for water treatment in Germany and currently employs 50 people. In order to meet the increasing demand of the Asian markets, inge AG also maintains a sales office in China.
Compared to conventional water treatment methods, use of inge’s ultrafiltration technology offers numerous advantages: the modules can be easily and quickly installed in the system, and the membrane fibres are extremely robust and stable. Since inge started its operations six years ago, it has not seen any fibre breakages in its membranes. Such exceptional advantages ensure low system operating cost, thus providing lower whole life investment cost. An additional important advantage is the security that it can provide for health; the small-pore sized filters of inge’s patented Multibore® membrane reliably reject particles, micro-organisms, bacteria and viruses, thus securing clean drinking water free from pathogens.
