Last week, at the Aquatech show in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Veolia Biothane and Pentair have signed the agreement for the supply of the ultra filtration part of the anaerobic membrane bio-reactor (MBR) project at the Mars facility in Poland. This agreement is the second success for Memthane Anaerobic MBR at Mars in just a short period of time, following the Mars Veghel project in the Netherlands where Anaerobic MBR was selected since it showed to be more sustainable compared with conventional anaerobic technologies.
Also at the Aquatech show, the Anaerobic MBR process, a joint innovation between Veolia Biothane and Pentair, was awarded with the Aquatech Innovation Award 2013 for wastewater treatment. Veolia and Pentair have a global agreement for exclusive cooperation to develop and sell the Anaerobic MBR technology, called Memthane. Anaerobic MBR provides a new solution to treat high-strength and high-solid waste streams found in industries such as distilleries, dairies and bio-ethanol producers, combining anaerobic digestion and membrane separation to generate biogas.
The new Memthane technology is based on an anaerobic reactor in combination with Pentair’s X-Flow ultrafiltration membranes. In the Memthane reactor the wastewater from Mars is biologically treated and converted into high calorific biogas. The treated effluent and biomass are separated by means of ultrafiltration units. The biomass is recycled back to the Memthane reactor. By one single process stage the wastewater is almost completely purified. The final effluent is discharged to sewer, or can be reused. With a higher biogas yield than any other comparable process (99% removal of incoming COD) Memthane Anaerobic MBR is financially and sustainably favorable over conventional technologies.
Henk Schonewille, director sales engineered systems of Pentair advanced water technologies, said: "We are proud to have signed our third agreement with Veolia Biothane for the supply of the UF technology for the three Memthane projects in Europe."
Dennis Korthout, business development manager of Veolia Biothane, said: "This contract is for us a milestone in Europe. The recent successes with the Memthane Anaerobic MBR to global leading food companies as Mars, are a clear sign of the economical and sustainable benefits of the technology.
The wastewater treatment plant will come into operation at the beginning of 2014.
