Rwanda’s Water and Sanitation Corporation Ltd. (WASAC) has contracted an American water treatment firm, Culligan International, to design and install a water treatment plant to provide drinking water to Kigali.
“Kigali needs about 100,000 cubic meters of water per day (m3/d) while water supplied is 65,000m m3 per day, which implies a shortage of about 35,000 m3 per day,” said Chief Executive Officer of WASAC Eng. James Sano.
Expected to be completed by July 2015, the new water treatment facility will help Kigali close this gap.
Culligan is expected to design the system that will produce 25,000 m3 per day with the ability to expand capacity to 39,000 m3 per day once performance results are proven.
The expanded production will help Kigali meet future water demands.
“Culligan is honored by the faith that WASAC has placed in our experience, expertise and capabilities to deliver this plant, which represents a critical piece of infrastructure for this growing city,” said Laurence Bower, Senior Vice President EMEA, Culligan.
Culligan will provide all design and engineering works, equipment supply, civil works and installations.
The plant will draw on the Nyabarongo River – Rwanda’s largest river and part of the upper headwaters of the Nile.
The treatment system is made up of raw water intake from the river including screening, a raw water intake pump station, sedimentation tank, aeration tank, raw water pump station, Culligan Omni Filtration (OFSY) Systems, disinfection and a 1,000 cubic meter treated water reservoir.
With the Culligan OFSY filtration system, the plant is equipped to deal with the challenges presented by the feed water, which has very high mineral levels such as iron and manganese..
The 2-stage pressure tank filtration OFSY system offers several other advantages.
For example, it removes Giardia and Cryptosporidium and other micro-organisms that are resistant to chlorine disinfection, as well as other contaminants such as arsenic, iron and manganese in the water.
The system has a 60% smaller footprint compared to traditional gravity filtration technologies and chemical usage may be lowered from 30% to 90%.
