A new seawater desalination technology demonstrated by German firm Taprogge GmbH in Can Gio District, HCM City, last week can solve drinking water issues in the country’s remote areas.
The new technology, named Taprogge Terrawater, has been applied successfully over the last two months in the coastal district, with about 5 cubic metres of potable water produced daily at the firm’s demonstration plant.
While most desalination developments concentrate on the improvement of energy consumption in large scale desalination plants, Taprogge Terrawater focuses on small scale desalination which is useful in “decentralised desalination” applications, such as remote areas and islands where residents cannot get access to regular water supply networks.
Solution needed
“Especially in small and remote areas like the Mekong Delta it is excessively expensive for the Government to build water supply grid,” said Detlef Taprogge, President of the company.
“There is a definite need for ‘stand alone’ systems which can produce safe drinking water from seawater, brackish water or even from wastewater.”
While there is enough water in the Mekong Delta region, the technology used so far has proven either too complicated for non-engineers, too sensitive against variations in the source water quality, and the high consumption of energy and chemicals which are discharged to the environment.
Taprogge Terrawater technology uses waste or solar energy to run the system. To operate the system, waste heat not hotter than 70 oC – 100 oC is required. While waste heat is abundantly available in most industrial processes it is released today into the environment.
“Such waste heat is exactly what we need. It is free of charge and it does not really matter a lot how much of this energy is used as it has no price,” said Nguyen Minh Phong from the local Esaco Group - Taprogge’s partner in Viet Nam.
“In remote locations or on islands, generators have been bought to produce electricity, but only some 40 per cent of the energy input is converted into shaft power, the rest is let go into the environment and is exhausted to the chimney or destroyed in the cooling water system of the engine,” said Tran Viet Dung. President of Esaco Group.
Truong Thuy Trang, Deputy Director of HCM City Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the new technology would be useful for HCM City, especially Can Gio District.
She said the new desalination technology can also be applied in other remote areas in the country that are threatened by seawater infiltration.
