Asia’s emerging countries often miss out on modern water treatment technologies that are simpler and cheaper than more-established options, said a water expert in Singapore recently.
Chief of technology for Dutch water technology firm PWN Technologies, Peer Kamp said on the sidelines of this month’s Singapore International Water Week that decision-makers in Asia’s developing countries tend to choose water treatment options they consider to be proven technology and therefore a safe choice.
The resulting water treatment systems are frequently too costly, outdated and difficult to maintain, he told Eco-Business.
“There’s a saying in the industry that if a technology is too expensive, you will only find it in developing countries,” he added.
Dr Kamp has spent the last several decades seeking cost-effective solutions for raw water treatment in Southeast Asia after he was asked to help find ways to rehabilitate water treatment systems in Indonesia.
Fixing the existing treatment plants was not always an option, so he set out to design a new system that was affordable and performed well, he said.
After his first attempt turned out to be more expensive than planned, he realised that he had failed to account for local conditions. He had based the design on Dutch circumstances, including high costs for labour and concrete components and relatively low costs for materials such as stainless steel – all factors which were different from Indonesian conditions, he noted.
PWN has since launched a water treatment series for filtering surface water that Dr Kamp said uses about 30 per cent less energy, requires 30 per cent fewer chemicals and costs half as much as typical water treatment plants in the region.
Its plant in Cao Lanh in the Vietnamese province of Dong Tap has performed well since it was built in 2009, he said.
Dr Kamp said that the plant’s operation is simple enough that staff can be trained in under two days. Another benefit of the technology is that it continues to work well despite changing water levels and variable water quality, he added.
Two more Vietnamese plants - with a combined capacity of 2400 cubic metres per day - were installed in the city of Cho Lach in the Ben Tre province earlier this year.
PWN has also installed the technology in about 10 small-scale plants in Indonesia, and is now bidding on a plant in Ho Chi Minh City.
About 40 per cent of the households in Vietnam’s largest cities have no access to a central water systems and only one in three towns have access to treated piped water, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
ADB also estimates that in 2015, about 605 million people throughout Asia will not yet have access to treated water.
Water experts have warned that Asia’s cities investing in the water sector should prioritise reducing the amount of treated water that gets wasted.
An ADB report launched during Singapore International Water Week noted that Asia loses about US$9 billion of clean drinking water each year from bad management and leaky systems.
ADB vice president for sustainable development Bindu Lohani said in a statement that the region was facing a major water crisis, and that unacceptable levels of water were being lost through le!ks and inefficiencies.
The ADB report, called Good Practices in Urban Water Management, highlighted the successes of eight water utilities in Asia, including Bangkok, Thailand; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Jamshedpur, India; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Manila, Philippines; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China; and Singapore.
The reduction of non-revenue water, which is lost due to leaks or theft, is an important`area for improvement for most water utilities in developing countries in Asia, said the report’s authors, pointing out that poverty should not be a limiting factor.
“Phnom Penh’s success in managing non-revenue water, with only about 6 per cent water losses in 2008, is comparable with that of Singapore and demolishes the myth that good practices of reducing non-revenue water levels are impossible to achieve in developing countries,” noted the report.
ADB has suggested a target of under 20 per cent as an attainable goal for Asia’s developing countries. Vietnam’s current average water loss is about 32 per cent and rates are similar in Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and parts of Manila.
“By cutting the amount of lost water in half, 150 million (additional) people could be supplied with`treated water,” said Dr Lohani.
