Water Treatment Companies in South Afric···

Water Treatment Companies in South Africa

When enjoying the relief of a Highveld downpour on a blistering summer day, it is easy to forget that most of our country is officially classified as semi-arid, and that droughts are a common feature of our climate. Consumers in many parts of the country will be all too familiar with the restrictions placed on the use of hoses for watering the lawn or cleaning cars and filling their kettles and bathtubs to prepare for threatened interruptions to the supply. For many, the steady escalation in their monthly bills have become not just another symptom of inflation, but a constant reminder that the nation’s reserves are limited and increasingly dependent upon the services of the many water treatment companies operating in South Africa.

In most cases, it is unwise and/or unsafe to drink the water of a river or lake directly, before it has been suitably processed. In practice, the production of a safe, potable supply for domestic and commercial consumers is largely the responsibility of the country’s municipal purification plants. However, although the personnel of these plants may be tasked with operating the equipment and overseeing the various stages in the purification process they, in turn, are likely to be dependent upon the support of third-party specialists in this field. These are the businesses that supply, install, and maintain that equipment, as well as, in some cases, providing municipalities with independent monitoring of the refined product’s quality before it is piped to the end-user.

While these plants draw the raw resource mainly from surface and groundwater sources, a dramatic increase in usage, and difficulties in maintaining adequate reserves using these somewhat limited options, have prompted some of the water treatment companies in South Africa to now take their lead from Israel and desert states such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai, by eyeing the alternative resources that lie beyond the country’s shores in the oceans that surround us. Normally unsuitable for human consumption and for many of the other tasks that depend upon our dwindling reserves of the fresh variety, once the various mineral salts and other contaminants have been removed, there are many viable uses for desalinated seawater. For example, today, Dubai relies almost entirely upon desalination plants for its potable supply, supplemented by bottled products obtained from distant mountain streams and a bare minimum from underground aquifers.

Desalination may be achieved in several ways, of which the earliest and the simplest is distillation. There have been many refinements of this basic principle, each designed to speed the process and lower its cost. Subjecting the seawater to vacuum, for instance, acts to lower the boiling point of the liquid and, therefore, the energy required. In small-scale systems, compression can be used to provide the heat necessary for evaporation. Freezing and solar evaporation are alternatives, but the former consumes a lot of power while in the latter case, though solar energy is free, the installation to harness it and to apply it is extremely costly.

Some of the water treatment companies in South Africa now offer a system that makes use of reverse osmosis, often abbreviated to RO. In addition to providing a far more cost-effective approach to the desalination of seawater and brackish sources than distillation methods, RO may be used as a tertiary stage in the processing of wastewater to render it potable, and as a means to produce an ultrapure product suitable, for instance, in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and the preparation of chemical reagents. The need for water is growing and the cost of supplying it escalating steadily, leaving many consumers hard-hit by the frequent increases in their monthly bills. To help offset these increases and to reduce pressure on our limited reserves, many of these suppliers offer more compact purification plants for domestic use, on farms, by factories, and entertainment venues, and wherever there may be a financial or ecological advantage in reclaiming and re-using wastewater.

Please contact: Mr. Tian ZH, If you need water treatment chemicals.

Email: tian@chem.net