Su-Saharan Africa is a very dry region, and South Africa has felt and is still feeling the effects of global climate change and a lack of rain after one of the harshest droughts. There are currently water restrictions in place nationally, and even though the summer rains have brought some relief in the northern regions, drinking water is still at a premium.

The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, situated in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, recently revealed that it had acquired loan funding to the value of R700 million as well as a grant of R93 million which will be injected into the Northern and Western Aqueduct Projects in an effort to strengthen the capacity of bulk water supply and meet the needs of the greater eThekwini region.

Water-related challenges exist in the province where the existing bulk water supply infrastructure has reached the limit of its capacity, resulting in constrained water supply to residents. Aged infrastructure has also impacted on drinking water quality.

The Municipality also revealed that it would be hosting a demonstration project using Hitachi’s RemixWater seawater desalination and water reuse integrated system. The project will run for four years and produce 6,250m3/day from wastewater.

The RemixWater system operates by reducing the salt concentration by mixing the water expelled through reverse osmosis (RO) membranes during the water reuse process with seawater. According to Hitachi, this leads to “decreases of reverse osmosis pressure in the filtering stage through RO membranes and achieves around 40% of decrease in pumping pressure of conventional desalination process”.

The salt concentration of brine discharged into the sea is also reduced to around 3.5%, which is the same level as seawater.

The aim of the RemixWater system project is to accomplish a 30% energy saving compared with existing desalination systems which, in a country that is also plagued by power problems, brownouts, load-shedding and more, will be very welcomed.

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