Watericon, a South African-based water treatment solutions company, recently completed the assembly of containerised water filtration systems destined for Mauritius– less than five months after it won the tender to do so.
“The key driver here is that very few companies can put together 11 containers in such a short space of time,” says Watericon process engineer Jaco Branders. “We only had 20 weeks to design, build, transport and commission all 11 containers, but we did it and everything went smoothly.”
Branders goes on to say that although Mauritius has very good rainfall, a lot of the inland rain gets diverted through the river system into the sea and this water is lost. The containers will therefore be installed at various key points to capture the river water, filter it, disinfect it and then send it to reservoirs for storage and distribution around the island.
“There are dry seasons and wet seasons in Mauritius, so it was important to try and treat and store as much water as possible through the wet season,” says Branders. “When the rainfall hits the water it has really high turbidity levels and that needed to be treated.”
“Without the containers, this capturing, treatment and storage of the river water cannot be done and Mauritius would face a water shortage. If this water is not treated properly then you also face issues of disease and infections if communities drink this water, something that we were able to negate with this project.”
The system will also be fully automated with telemetry enabling operators to operate the system remotely.
