The future of water and how Sasol has become a leader in water sustainability.

The future of water and how Sasol has become a leader in water sustainability.

Well done Sasol!!
Sasol has recently completed a project in partnership with General Electric.
This new water technology plant cleans waste water and supplies biogas as a byproduct for power generation.  A very progressive technology that is based on the concepts of 'The Blue Economy'  (no waste, ecosystem cycle, cascading nutrients)

Known as Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Technology (AnMBR), the new technology will be further developed as a demonstration plant at Sasol’s research and development campus at Sasol One Site in Sasolburg.  This new water treatment plant involves cleaning the waste water
which contains organics generated from Sasol's operations via GE's ecomagination qualified ZeeWeed 500 membrane.  These organics have proven to be the ideal food, or substrate, for anaerobic micro-organisms.  This new technology will be commercialized at all Sasol GTL and CTL plants by 2015.   

Waste water from the GTL (Gas to Liquid - conversion of natural gas to liquid petroleum products) and CTL (Coal to Liquid - coal liquefaction to produce petroleum-like synthetic crude oil) plants will treated and can be used again elsewhere.  This maximises the efficiency of these plants and addresses the water scarcity problem we have in South Africa and globally. This water scarcity problem has a direct negative impact on the economy and on all Sasol operations worldwide as most of the Sasol plants are in water scarce regions.  So this step taken by Sasol is a breakthrough!

What is AnMBR all about?  Well what I could gather from the different articles published is that it involves anaerobic micro-organisms that are able to live in an environment devoid of oxygen such as sediment layers on floors of lakes, dams and the ocean.  These micro-organisms reside on the membrane and extract and process the organics passing through. Currently Sasol  uses aerobic and anearobic microbes to treat GTL and CTL effluents in Qatar and Secunda, but without the membrane technology. The next step is the development of AMBR (aerobic membrane bioreactor technology) for a GTL plant in the US.

The new AnMBR technology is one of the many solutions that can be applied in the petrochemical and refining environment and also benefit other industries in treating waste water.  


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The possibilities of using this technology in industries worldwide are endless!  In my opinion a great step forward for re-using industrial waste in large processing industries.