Elementis Specialties, West Virginia, USA

Recycle/Reuse System based on Ultra-Filtration and Reverse Osmosis; Capacity: 500,000 GPD

Elementis Specialties was in need of a recycle/reuse system based on ultra-filtration and desalination. The project included design and construction of 500,000 GPD treatment plant for which UEM was been chosen among several international bidders.

The Fully Automated Recycle/Reuse plant is designed to treat wastewater form an existing wastewater treatment plant based on Sequential Batch Reactor technology followed by a Dual media filtration system. The wastewater that required treatment was characterized by high TDS (3500 PPM) and TSS of 10 PPM.

The treatment plant essentially consists of the following treatment steps:

Pre-chlorination for controlling algae growth
Measurement of Turbidity and Electrical conductivity levels of feed Water
Removal of Turbidity/Suspended/colloidal solids through Ultrafiltration
Coagulation through adding ferric based chemical to enhance the efficiency of UF System
Cleaning/backwashing of UF membrane System by adding chemicals viz. Sodium Hypo and Acid
Storage of UF product in UF Product Water Tank
Lowering the RO feed water pH/alkalinity through Acid Dosing
Antiscalant dosing facilities to increase the solubility limit of the concentrating ions
Dechlorination through addition of SMBS
Measurement of Silt Density index (SDI)
Pumping to RO System feed water through vertical multistage centrifugal pump
Removal of total dissolved solids through Osmosis system
Flushing of RO membranes through centrifugal pumps to remove the accumulation of salts and physical impurities on the surface of the membrane
Chemical in-place (CIP) system for cleaning the RO Membrane thus increasing the life of the membranes
Augmentation of pH level through addition of Sodium hydroxide
Storage of RO product water to facilitate client to re-use the water from this tank onwards

UEM was responsible for the complete design, the designers supervision for supply and installation of M&E plants and equipment, the complete automation to operate and monitor plant with state of art PLC/SCADA of Siemens Moore Series technology. This Plant was completed by August, 2004.