Drinking water, a priceless good...

Membratec projects, builds and commercialises treatment plants using membrane technology for the production of municipal drinking water.

Membratec also integrates membrane filtration in more complex treatment chains and realises centralised water softening and brackish water desalination plants.

Water treatment

The complexity of the treatment required for the production of drinking water depends strongly upon the quality of its raw water, and therefore upon its origin (aquifer, groundwater, spring well, surface, brackish or sea water), but also upon the degree of exposure of these waters to potential pollutants.

About a third of the drinking water supplied in Switzerland does not require any treatment, another third is treated in a single stage (chlorine disinfection, UV irradiation, filtration), whereas the last third needs to be processed in a multi-stage chain including some of the following unitary treatments: coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, oxidation and adsorption.

During the past ten years, membrane technologies have imposed themselves as an attractive alternative for the replacement of one or several of these unitary treatments, offering additional advantages such as better performances, compactness and lower operation costs (energy and chemicals consumption). Replacement costs and the risk of irreversible membrane blocking have initially slowed down the penetration of membranes in the municipal drinking water market.

These obstacles have now been overcome and membrane technologies (ultrafiltration for the treatment of freshwater, reverse osmosis for softening and desalination) are ready to meet the growing drinking water needs of the world population.

Membrane technologies

Membrane technologies are processes which allow the separation of the different components of a fluid based on their size. The right choice of membrane cut-off can for example enable a clarification (separation of suspended solids) which can be achieved with a microfiltration, or it can allow the extraction of pesticides by means of nanofiltration.