Brackish water treatment solution for Egyptian fertiliser manufacturer

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Ion exchange resins and membrane elements from Lanxess are being used in a new water treatment plant for Egypt’s leading fertiliser manufacturer, Alexandria Fertilisers.

Brackish water is being pretreated using reverse osmosis using 228 Lewabrane B400 FR elements, and fully demineralised with the Lewatit MonoPlus ion exchange resins.

As well as achieving a required final demineralised water conductivity of below 0.08µS/cm and 2ppb silicon dioxide, Lanxess reports that the combination of the two technologies is providing a stable and reliable process.

The plant is fed with canal water from the Nile, which has seasonally-varying inorganic and organic total dissolved solids content of between 300 and 550mg/l.

The water is pre-treated using precipitation and flocculation (coagulation), cold lime softening, and filtration. The RO plant consists of two trains, each having a feed stream of 120m3/hour and a 74% recovery rate.

Lanxess’ director of membrane business at the company’s Liquid Purification Technologies business unit, Alexander Scheffler, said: ‘The membrane elements from Lanxess exhibit an excellent level of performance with the difficult Nile surface water. The rejection measured even exceeds expectations.’

Keywords: 

  • Egypt, Lanxess, industry, ion exchange, reverse osmosis