From humble beginnings in the wine industry, Quality Filtration Systems has, over its 22-year existence, been involved in many industrial water applications – from food and beverage to mining – doing its part in the private sector to assist with its ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis technologies.
The flagship project of Quality Filtration Systems (QFS) in the steel industry is a 5 MLD wastewater treatment plant for ArcelorMittal in Vanderbijlpark. Here, process water is fed through a high-rate clarifier, acting as a high-turbidity protection step, to ultrafiltration (UF) skids and through reverse osmosis (RO) skids, finally producing water that is safe to dispose of from site. The product water quality the plant achieved was below 200 μS/cm and was successfully completed in August 2012. For another steel industry site, Steelpoort Tubatse, QFS has installed a system in which wastewater from the Samancor plant is pre-treated through Memcor® UF membranes, which serve as protection for RO membranes upstream of the UF filters. This solution is able to generate water below a turbidity level of 1 NTU, ensuring clean process water for the Samancor plant to utilise in its processes. Remaining in the steel processing industry, QFS was able to provide a solution to Cape Gate to treat 40 m3/h of heavy-metal-laden wastewater. This solution made use of Duraflow® tubular microfiltration technology and RO to produce water with a conductivity of less than 200 μS/cm and was completed in January 2015. Sticking to QFS’s roots, the company has been able to install a UF and RO solution at Distell’s cider facility. Treating pre-treated organic industrial effluent water, this facility is able to produce 2.4 MLD of irrigation water for Distell’s facility. This project was completed in June 2018.
