The water looks fresh and clean under the clear blue sky on a
Wednesday afternoon, but it's produced from sewage water. Coming
from the city sewage and reclaimed at the Qinghe Water Reclamation
Plant (Qinghe WRP), this reclaimed water helps cut down on water
consumption of Beijing's lakes and rivers.
Reclaimed water is seen in
a water pool in Qinghe Water Reclamation Plant.
The media was invited by the Organizing Committee for the
Beijing Olympic Games (BOCOG) to visit the sewage treatment plant
and see first-hand how water reclamation works at the plant in the
north of the city.
Holding a glass of reclaimed wastewater, Zhang Jianxin, senior
engineer Beijing Drainage Group said the reclaimed water they
produced from city sewage water could be used for industry,
irrigation and urban purposes except for human consumption.
As a city running short of water but welcoming the nation's
first Olympics in one year's time, Beijing is going all out to
support the Olympic water supply and maintain its brisk economic
growth.
With four reclamation plants, two reused water pumping stations
and 4,000 km of distribution pipeline working for the city, 2.5
million cubic meters of water is processed per day, accounting for
the 90 percent of the city's total wastewater, the goal set by the
city government for the 2008 Olympic Games.
"Of the 90 percent of wastewater processed, 46 percent is
recycled. We finish building another reclamation plant called Bei
Xiaohe by the end of this year before the Games. This will help us
to reach the 50 percent ratio, and that is our target," explained
Yang Xiangping, general manager of the Beijing Drainage Group.
Zhang Jianxin, senior
engineer Beijing Drainage Group holds a glass of reclaimed water
and speaks to the visiting media.
Qinghe WRP, together with Bei Xiaohe plant to be completed this
year, will pump high quality reclaimed water for the Olympic
central area, which is located on the north end of city. Bei
Xiaohe, according to the press release, will produce even higher
quality water than that by Qinghe.
According to Wang Hongchen, chief engineer of the Group, Qinghe
WRP uses a world-class ultra-filtration membrane technology to
clean the water. First the water is separated from the sewage and
this is called effluent water.
Then, this water, which is also called feedwater enters each
cell or fibrous material from the bottom of the membrane cells and
is drawn through several sheets of this material by suction from
the filtration pump. Then the water from this membrane system flows
to an activated carbon filtration tank and then oxidized with ozone
to become relatively clean water.
Moreover, the Qinghe reclaimed water will run to the nearby
Haidian and Chaoyang districts for urban uses such as road cleaning
and watering roadside plants and flowers. In that way, about 30
million cubic meters of water will be saved annually.
To ensure a safe sewer network during the Olympics, the company
has built a Geographic Information System (GIS) underground to
monitor the sewer network. The staff displayed a robot that
monitors and repairs the sewer pipes.
Now six Olympic venues are connected with the plant to use the
reclaimed water it produces. The company said 77 km of pipes would
be laid underground to transport reclaimed water to Olympic venues
by the end of this year.
Water is oxidized with
ozone in an activated carbon filtration tank.
It smelt of sewage at the entrance of the reclaimed water
processing line, where the sewage water was being processed. "We
have about 240 tons of sludge per day after the sewage waster is
cleaned," the chief engineer explained.
"But the sludge is not waste at all," Wang added, "We are
building a sludge processing system introduced from Germany to turn
it into fertilizer. We will provide 60 tons of fertilizer to
Beijing's farmlands every day with the system."
(China Daily July 20, 2007)
