Challenges and Solutions in the Water and Wastewater Treatment Industry in Africa

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Challenges and Solutions in the Water and Wastewater Treatment Industry in Africa

Construction Review had an exclusive interview with Nick Nicholas, the Application Engineer/Technical Director for Genesis Water Technologies, Inc, a global leader in integrated solutions for drinking water & wastewater treatment.

In this role and previous roles with GWT, Mr. Nicholas has coordinated and led a global team of technical professionals in designing and building custom built water and wastewater treatment system solutions for industrial, commercial, and municipal clients within the USA and across the world.

1. How does Genesis Water see the African Water & Wastewater Treatment market?

The increasing population growth and the expansion of industrial development have led to growing water scarcity across Africa. This combined with deficient drinking water & sanitation services, represents critically important challenges, especially in regions across sub-Saharan Africa.

Grey water and wastewater reclamation is a promising approach to reducing water scarcity in Africa. This process serves as a motivating force for improved sanitation services and the protection of the environment by treating wastewater and redeploying this treated water for the benefit of applications including irrigation, agriculture and other non-potable applications.

Genesis Water Technologies, an innovative US based global water & wastewater engineering Solutions Company, sees the African water treatment market striving closer to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Access to sustainable and safe drinking water and sanitation is very important to meeting millennium challenge development goals. For many countries in Africa, an extensive effort is required in order to meet these millennium development goals.

Current sustainable practices for water & wastewater treatment across Africa are typically insufficient to ensure safe water and basic sanitation. One of the main challenges to address this insufficiency is to develop a structure that can assist in the integration of technological solutions and social impact management efforts to enhance the water education of the citizens of municipalities and private sector clients within Africa as well.

2. Which are the most popular wastewater treatment methods being applied in Africa currently?

Some of the common yet antiquated and inefficient wastewater treatment methods include activated sludge treatment, combined trickling filter plant and stabilization ponds, which are most popular. This is currently being appropriately phased out and replaced over time with more advanced and sustainable technologies including moving bed bioreactor technology (MBBR), specialized electrocoagulation and the utilization of tertiary wastewater filtration with ultraviolet disinfection. All of these technologies are designed, engineered, integrated and supplied Genesis Water Technologies.

The drinking water methods most common in treating predominantly groundwater and to a lesser degree surface water include using some sort of physical /chemical process followed by disinfection using chlorine.

Visit Construction Review Online to read the full interview.

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