Airport upgrade with inge® ultrafiltration

When Beijing airport's water supply system needed an upgrade to meet stricter standards, the customer chose to use the same inge ultrafiltration modules/membranes as replacements. These would provide the basis for saving gallons of water over the next ten years.

The inge® ultrafiltration modules (UF) at Beijing Airport have been running successfully for ten years. They are now being replaced, but not due to technical necessity, but because the operator is required to apply stricter standards under a new directive issued by the Beijing Water Affairs Bureau.

When the Olympic Games were held in Beijing in 2008, the organizers came up with the theme of the "Green Olympics". Their goal was to encourage the whole country to achieve better environmental protection, conserve natural resources and maintain the ecological balance. Consuming less water and implementing water recycling strategies were one of the core components of a campaign to make the Chinese capital more eco-friendly.

One of the projects run under the Green Olympics banner, also launched in 2008, was the Capital Airport Aviation Purification Station at Terminal T3 of Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA).

The plant was designed to purify and treat both the waste water from T3 and the municipal waste water from the Shunyi district, making the recycled water available not only for cooling systems, but also for cleaning hotel facilities, irrigating green spaces and topping up local water features.

The goal was to reduce water consumption over a ten-year period, if running at full capacity, by an amount equivalent to nine times the size of Kunming Lake* – that is somewhere in the region of 18 million tons of water.

Green Olympics2008 Launched in 2008 as part of preparations for the Olympic Games, the new domestic waste water treatment process was up and running by 2009. After passing through conventional physical and biological pretreatment stages, the water undergoes ultrafiltration (UF) to remove particles, bacteria and viruses and reverse osmosis (RO) for desalination.

Half of the purified water is then used as supplementary water (e.g. for cleaning processes) while the other half is either used to irrigate green spaces or pumped directly into bodies of water, including the nearby river.

Inge UF in actionIn the initial installation project, the Capital Airport opted for inge® UF modules equipped with sturdy and robust Multibore membranes. Seven capillaries embedded in a foam support structure remove suspended solids, bacteria and even viruses from the water. The tiny pores in their filter surface, each of which measures just 20 nanometers across, produce clean water thanks to this patented German technology.

For the past ten years, three filtration lines, each containing 64 dizzer 5000plus WR modules, have produced a combined total of 600 m³ of purified water an hour forwarding it to the next stage for desalination.

The replacementFollowing ten years of successful operation and huge savings in the amount of tap water used at the airport, the customer opted for the next generation of inge UF modules to upgrade the technology in the existing plant at the end of 2018.

There was no technical necessity to do this, but the Beijing Water Affairs Bureau had issued new regulations that required the airport to meet significantly stricter emission standards. The decision to use next-generation inge UF modules for the upgrade clearly underlines the customer's continuing enthusiasm for German-made Multibore technology.

inge GmbH is proud to be able to continue its partnership with the Capital Airport. After all, satisfied customers are the best form of marketing. Replacing the old inge UF modules with next-generation inge UF modules provides the perfect basis for saving gallons of water over the next ten years – and that's a great decision for a better future.

*The lake at the Summer Palace in Beijing

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