Last month, a total of 17,722 visitors and 995 exhibitors attended WEFTEC.09, the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) 82nd annual technical exhibition and conference held in Orlando, Fla. Particularly in this time of economic concerns, the strong showing reinforces the importance of water — its availability, treatment and reuse — in both industrial and municipal sectors.
At the show, leaders in the water-treatment arena shared their insights on the current state of water treatment and technologies. Chuck Gordon, president and CEO of Siemens Water Technologies Corp. (Warrendale, Pa.; http://www.water.siemens.com) emphasized the role of energy, “On average, a municipality spends about 30 to 40% of its energy bill on water and wastewater treatment, and much of the energy cost is for supplying aeration.” He mentioned several solutions that his company offers for reducing energy use, not just for aeration, but also for reducing sludge and removing more water from sludge to reach high (~40%) solids levels. Gordon also says that the impact of the U.S. stimulus package has been positive, although only a small portion of it (~ 5% or $300 million) is targeted for water-treatment process equipment. About 70% of the projects Siemens is working on related to stimulus spending is for retrofitting, as opposed to new construction.
Klaus Andersen, executive vice-president of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies (Saint Maurice, France; http://www.veoliawaterst.com) and CEO for the Americas and Australia, has been focused on reducing energy costs for some time. Some approaches provide significant savings he says, such as implementing anaerobic water-treatment in place of aerobic, which is what Veolia’s Biothane group specializes in. Andersen further says that people are looking more and more at water reuse and recycling. He cites Veolia’s recent contract with Diageo USVI for a washwater treatment plant for its rum distillery as an example (see CE, September 2009, p.63). Similar to the way many companies are now looking at carbon footprints, Andersen expects a water footprint to become common in the future.
The following products and services from these and many other companies are a sampling of what is currently offered for water treatment and reuse.