Pump manufacturer Grundfos has secured a S$1.4-million grant to develop a wastewater filtration system that enabled the reduction of capital investment and operational costs for wastewater treatment.
The grant, awarded by the Singapore Environment and Water Industry Programme Office, under the National Research Foundation’s Incentive for Research and Innovation Scheme, funded research and development (R&D) and a pilot demonstration of the technology upon successful proof of concept.
Grundfos, under the direction of the Dr Gao Xin-led Grundfos Water Innovation Centre in Singapore, planned to focus its R&D on the industrial treatment of wastewater using cake filtration technology.
“The cake filtration project relies strongly on precise and controlled pumping of water and sludge and will offer a good study platform on the optimisation of cost and energy use in pumping operations.
“I’m confident we will set new research benchmarks in both Denmark and Singapore through this collaboration,” said Grundfos Global Research and Technology VP Lars Enevoldsen.
The company explained in a statement that the cake filtration produced superior filtrate quality compared with traditional techniques.
The effluent discharge standard is comparable to that of membrane filtration, while halving the cost of effluent polishing, which is the removal of impurities from secondary effluent.
There is further potential to treat the filtrate and recycle it for irrigation or industrial uses.
The technology is expected to fit in with a broad range of solutions for water treatment and wastewater discharge and recycling.