RecoBLUE’s Sustainable Solution for Kent and Canterbury Hospital

The central renal dialysis water system at Kent and Canterbury Hospital consists of a twin-pass, heat sanitisable reverse osmosis unit and operates for 18 hours per day generating some 3,400 litres per hour of high purity water. The Trust has a sustainable development management plan to reduce water consumption by 25% by 2020. To help meet this target, the 1,100 litres per hour of reject water from the Renal Unit’s reverse osmosis plant (RO)
was being discharged to the Hospital’s grey water recovery system. This reject water had been softened and filtered during the reverse osmosis pretreatment, and the Renal Technicians felt that it was too good to simply pass
to the grey water system. Using the RecoBLUE on line calculator developed by Veolia Water Technologies, the technicians concluded that it should be possible to recover at least 550 litres per hour of the reject water and recycle
it straight back into the holding tank of the renal unit’s RO plant. This would reduce the consumption of both mains feedwater and salt for the pre-treatment softeners, with a significant operating cost benefit for the renal unit. It was time to talk to Veolia’s Reco Solutions team.

Veolia’s solution was a RecoBLUE Recovery reverse osmosis unit designed to treat all of the 1,100 litres per hour of reject water and recycle at least 50% of it to a permeate quality significantly better than the mains water supplied to the Renal Unit. Although RecoBLUE recovery solutions have been used in a number of industries this is the first time it has been implemented in a renal dialysis unit.

• 50% of wastewater recovered
• 3½ years payback
• CO2 footprint reduction
• Salt consumption reduced