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Process Water Treatment


ESMIL Process Systems Ltd. specialises in the treatment of difficult wastewater. Many of the design solutions result in high degrees of water and product recovery as part of a membrane filtration stage. Reuse and recycling of water, with concomitant product recovery, now forms a key part of environmental performance requirements for many industries, being assessed for best available technology (BAT) under European IPPC regulation. The regulatory emphasis is on reduced water take (notably for high use sectors such as food and drink) and reduced waste disposal (either to sewer, discharge to the environment, or solids disposal by landfill or incineration). ESMIL has successfully installed treatment plants in the following markets:

  • pharmaceutical and microelectronics
  • food and beverage process water
  • potable water from seawater desalination
  • boiler feed and cooling water

For certain applications, membrane treatment using ultrafiltration (or even coarser microfiltration) may suffice to allow adequate recovery of products and process water. In the food and pharmaceutical sectors UF treatment systems typically utilise low pressure membrane cartridges (incorporating tubular, hollow fibre or spiral wound Membrane Technologies) to achieve this.

For other applications, separation of dissolved solids by nanofiltration or reverse osmosis is required. These systems, used by ESMIL across a broad range of applications, typically operate at higher pressures than UF systems, but can result in excellent levels of product recovery and high percentages of water reuse. Typically 95-98% of salts are rejected by RO, together with the complete removal of bacteria and viruses. Whilst ESMIL can design bespoke systems, we can also use a range of standard "skid mounted" RO systems that are fully PLC controlled for reliable unattended operation. Treatment capacities range from 50 to 1200 m³/day, although the modular systems can be linked to treat higher volumes if necessary. These units are shop tested and can be quickly and easily installed ("plug-in-and-play").


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