Ultrafiltration Technology to Help Ekaterinburg Water Utility Reduce Usage of Freshwater Supplies

With water conservation remaining a key goal of efforts to modernise Russia’s water supply infrastructure, GE (USA) today announced the Ekaterinburg Municipal Unitary Enterprise Vodokanal utility has selected GE’s ZeeWeed* 500D ultrafiltration membrane technology to boost the water recovery capacity of its existing water treatment plant.

The administrative center of the Urals region, Ekaterinburg is Russia’s fourth-largest city with a population of 1.4 million. GE’s ultrafiltration membrane system will allow the Vodokanal treatment plant to recover 55,000 cubic meters per day (m3/day) of water, an equivalent of more than 950 Olympic-sized hockey rinks, for reuse to backwash the conventional filters in the facility. The new ZeeWeed system will begin commercial operation next year.

Adequate supplies of clean water are critical for Ekaterinburg, a major Russian industrial center that is home to extensive manufacturing operations that serve the defense, instrument-making, metallurgy, printing, opto-mechanical products and food sectors. The city also is a transport and logistics hub for the Trans-Siberian Railway.

In March 2012, a published news story underscored the importance of investing in water treatment by reporting that Russia’s housing sector had overtaken the country’s agricultural, chemical and other industrial sectors as the main source of water pollution, according to the director of water at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Ultrafiltration is the use of a pressure-driven barrier to the suspended solids, bacteria, viruses, endotoxins and other pathogens in water to produce treated water with very high purity and low silt density. It serves as a pretreatment for surface water, seawater and biologically treated municipal effluent before reverse osmosis and other membrane water-treatment systems. Ultrafiltration also is used in industry to separate suspended solids from solution. GE’s ZeeWeed ultrafiltration membranes offer an unmatched combination of ultrafiltration performance, energy efficiency, fast installation, ease of operation and reliability.