SIEMENS

Water treatment plants need to filter out a variety of substances from dirty water, including germs, agriculture-related toxins, and heavy metals such as lead. One of the most effective water treatment procedures involves the use of membrane filters that are being developed by Siemens in the United States. The filters’ fine hairline fibers hold back viruses, bacteria, and tiny particles when polluted water is pressed through them at high pressure. What’s more, this process does not require the use of chemical additives.
Siemens, the number one company in North America for water and wastewater treatment facilities, has installed more than 1,650 membrane systems to date in the U.S. alone. One of the systems can be found in Waxahachie, Texas. Faced with a rapidly growing population, in the spring of 2009 the city put into operation a new water treatment plant containing four filter units from Siemens. The facility processes 77.6 million liters of water daily, and plans call for its capacity to be increased to more than 300 million liters per day over the next few decades.
Another city that is preparing for projected population growth with Siemens technology is Scottsdale, Arizona. There, Siemens has expanded the water treatment facility and equipped it with membrane technology. The plant now purifies 190 million liters of water a day, compared to its previous daily capacity of 76.5 million liters.
Because of their modular design, Siemens water filters can be used on a very small scale as well. One example is offered by the portable water treatment solution known as SkyHydrant, which can purify 10,000 liters of drinking water per day. The system is used mainly in areas where people have no access to clean drinking water — in parts of Kenya, for example, as well as in regions of China and Bangladesh that have been devastated by natural disasters.