A CAPE Town water technology company with overseas business interests is offering solutions for the current crisis gripping parts of the country.
Head of business development at GrahamTek Water Waste Energy Innovation Tom Callaghan said: “There is technology for the re-use and recycling of non-potable surface water and for converting seawater into drinking water.
“We can treat water to World Health Organisation standards and help with supply.
“We clean any water. We offer affordable supply solutions.”
Callaghan said desalination had advanced in recent times to make it highly efficient and cost effective, and a major source globally.
He said it was a proven technology process in the Middle East and Asia. The company hoped to sell its water to governments and municipalities.
He explained that the 16-inch reverse osmosis technology, pioneered globally by GrahamTek, offered excellent yields and plant efficiency, as well as technology that produced electricity from the waste brine water which reduced the cost of energy, allowing the company to treat water within a municipality’s pricing.
Founded by William Graham and operating mainly overseas, it ran about 30 to 40 small plants in Strand and Somerset West, on farms, game lodges, mines and municipalities, he said.
Its first plant converting brackwater into freshwater was established at Bitterfontein.
“This model is new in South Africa, but we use it in Ghana where we sell to water authorities. It’s a perfect public/private partnership.
“We also create excess electricity from our technology which can be sold back to the (national) grid to support power supply. Our water plants operate off the grid.”
He said GrahamTek could deliver small to large-scale desalination and wastewater treatment plants to assist the country in long-term water-capacity building.
The company would finance, design, build and operate the plants, with no expenditure outlay or operational input from the government or municipality, he said.