GAW water technologies – a joint business division of GAW technologies, OSMO membrane systems and AutomationX – combines their core competencies and decades of experience in pulp and paper, water treatment and process automation.
Due to this unique combination of know-how and by focusing entirely on the pulp & paper industry GAW technologies creates a real added value for our customers through extensive synergy effects.
GAW water technologies provides highly efficient water treatment solutions from a single source, and tailored to the customer’s needs in almost every part of the pulp or paper mill.
Excellent water for excellent paper –
Water and wastewater treatment plants for the pulp & paper industry
Water is a key resource in the pulp & paper production. With a high-quality, efficient water and wastewater treatment system, enormous cost savings can be achieved by reducing consumption of water, energy, chemicals and raw materials.
High-quality water and wastewater treatment brings enormous cost savings in the papermaking process.
GAW water technologies help to ensure a reliable water supply and reduce the water footprint.
Valuable raw materials such as coating pigments can be recovered and the water returned to the process.
In the production process, high quality water can help to protect equipment and reduce reject rates. The use of chemicals in the paper manufacturing process can also be optimized.
Last but not least, excellent water is a prerequisite for the production of excellent paper.
Excellent water for excellent paper –
Water and wastewater treatment plants for
the pulp & paper industry
Water is a key resource in the pulp & paper production. With a high-quality, efficient water and wastewater treatment system, enormous cost savings can be achieved by reducing consumption of water, energy, chemicals and raw materials.
High-quality water and wastewater treatment brings enormous cost savings in the papermaking process.
GAW water technologies help to ensure a reliable water supply and reduce the water footprint.
Valuable raw materials such as coating pigments can be recovered and the water returned to the process.
In the production process, high quality water can help to protect equipment and reduce reject rates. The use of chemicals in the paper manufacturing process can also be optimized.
Last but not least, excellent water is a prerequisite for the production of excellent paper.
Excellent water for excellent paper –
Water and wastewater treatment
plants for the
pulp & paper industry
Water is a key resource in the pulp & paper production. With a high-quality, efficient water and wastewater treatment system, enormous cost savings can be achieved by reducing consumption of water, energy, chemicals and raw materials.
High-quality water and wastewater treatment brings enormous cost savings in the papermaking process. GAW water technologies help to ensure a reliable water supply and reduce the water footprint.
Valuable raw materials such as coating pigments can be recovered and the water returned to the process. In the production process, high quality water can help to protect equipment and reduce reject rates. The use of chemicals in the paper manufacturing process can also be optimized.
Last but not least, excellent water is a prerequisite for the production of excellent paper.
4 steps 2 success
Water is a key resource in the pulp & paper production. With a high-quality, efficient water and wastewater treatment system, enormous cost savings can be achieved by reducing consumption of water, energy, chemicals and raw materials.
High-quality water and wastewater treatment brings enormous cost savings in the papermaking process. GAW water technologies help to ensure a reliable water supply and reduce the water footprint.
Valuable raw materials such as coating pigments can be recovered and the water returned to the process. In the production process, high quality water can help to protect equipment and reduce reject rates. The use of chemicals in the paper manufacturing process can also be optimized.
Last but not least, excellent water is a prerequisite for the production of excellent paper.
Innovative and efficient treatment technologies for your needs
Innovative and efficient treatment technologies
for your needs
Innovative and efficient
treatment technologies
for your needs
Ultrafiltration
Rejection of suspended solids, turbidity, organic and colloidal matter, microbiological organisms
Customer satisfaction is the focus of GAW water technologies – without compromise.
Engineering Excellence
Developing the optimal solution for customer-specific requirements is our daily drive. We use state-of-the-art technology, but also conventional processes, just as the project requires. Our engineering aims at a holistic cost optimization, maximum plant availability and longevity as well as minimum environmental impact. Processes developed in-house help us achieve this. Seamless integration into the existing infrastructure and thorough, efficient and punctual project completion are a matter of course for us.
Operational Excellence
It is of great importance to us that the plants are not only well engineered, but also run without problems for a long time and are continuously optimized. Even after the handover of the plant, we will be happy to continue to support you with our experience. Through continuous support of the operators by us, an optimization of the process efficiency can be achieved.This can, for example, minimize energy and chemical consumption and increase the service life of the equipment. More than 40 years of experience in operating water treatment plants ensure competent support.
Customer excellence
The customer is the focus of all our activities.
GAW water technologies does not only engineer and build plants according to the customer’s needs, but also sees itself as a partner who consults and coordinates with the customer before, during and after the project. The optimisation of existing plants is becoming more and more important.
In all our activities, cost optimization and efficiency increase are in the foreground, using a sustainable approach that is committed to environmental protection.
Chloride load in process water exceeded limits specified for paper machine. Customer feared Chloride load in process water exceeded limits specified for paper machine. Customer feared corrosion of equipment.
Objective & Challenge
Desalination of process water @ optimized OPEX. Challenges: fluctuating salinity – high algae and humidic acids.
Plant start up
2012
Solution
Low fouling RO with specific OSMO pre-treatmentLow fouling RO with specific OSMO pre-treatmentand cleaning process features.
Treated water
River water
Customer benefits
Reliable continous process water supply
Improved economics in paper making process
Better process water quality allows higher paper grades production
The quality of the river water as feed to the existing process water treatment plant had deteriorated sharply since its installation. As a consequence the chemical consumption for equipment cleaning had risen dramatically.
Objective & Challenge
Operating cost optimization by reducing the chemical consumption as the main cost factor. Challenge: in spite of the varying feed water quality the objective was to deliver consistently good water to the desalination process.
Plant start up
2017
Treated water
River water
Solution
An ultrafiltration (UF) plant as pre-treatment to the existing desalination plant was installed. The UF features a special process to cope with the difficult conditions. Another highlight is the absence of coagulation chemicals in the UF process which further reduces costs and environmental impact.
Capacity
900 m³/h
Customer benefits
Significant reduction of operating costs due to reduced chemical consumption
Reduced plant maintenance due to much longer cartridge filter life time
The customer, a paper mill producing photo and decor paper, suffered from very high consumption of retention agents in the production process. The process water was sand filtered surface water used for cooling before being used as process water. Due to very good experiences with GAW processing equipment the customer asked GAW also for a water treatment solution.
Objective & Challenge
Customer studies suggested to demineralize the water to a certain extent. The very high hardness posed an additional challenge.
Plant start up
2007/2009/2012
Solution
The water demineralisation was achieved by installing high recovery reverse osmosis systems. Due to the extreme water hardness the plants were equipped with automatic cleaning in place systems. After the first plant operated successfully 4 more RO plants followed.
Treated water
River water
Capacity
125 m³/h
Customer benefits
The demineralised water led to the expected decrease in retention agents consumption
The payback period for the water treatment systems was less than 2 years
The cooling tower honeycombs of a paper mill producing newspaper from 100% waste paper experienced heavy clogging caused by excessive hardness and silicic acid in the cooling water which was treated water from the waste paper recycling process. The existing treatment was ineffective and caused high costs for maintenance and conditioning agents.
Objective & Challenge
Reduce operational costs by minimizing hardness and silicic acid from the cooling water.
Plant start up
2012
Solution
The cooling water make-up water is now mainly coming from a well which is treated by a RO plant with an iron and manganese removal unit upstream. The much better water quality allows to run the cooling water cycle at a concentration factor of almost 10.
Treated water
Well water
Capacity
50 m³/h
Customer benefits
Yearly savings of ~ Euro 100,000 in conditioning agents
Minimzed maintenance because of reduced clogging of the honeycomb structures in the cooling towers
Redundancy for boiler feed supply since RO can be used for this application as well
The customer, a cardboard manufacturer, used to discharge his waste water into the municipal sewage treatment plant for purification. After a sharp increase in fees, the company decided to build its own sewage treatment plant.
Objective & Challenge
The complete waste water treatment plant comprising a MBR plant and a RO plant was awarded to an EPC company also operating the plant. GAW Water built the RO plant.
Challenge: achieve a consistent conductivity of less than 50 mS/cm with a heavily fluctuating feed quality.
Plant start up
2008
Treated water
Secondary effluent
Capacity
24 m³/h
Solution
In order to meet the very ambitious limits under all conditions GAW Water decided to install a reverse osmosis plant with a two pass design and low fouling technology. GAW was selected based on the design as well as on existing good references.
Customer benefits
Significant savings on waste water discharge fees
Based on good experiences customer evaluates recovery increase to reduce fresh water consumption
A new, state-of-the-art paper mill producing containerboard required ultrapure water for steam generation for its RDF power plant.
Objective & Challenge
Plant reliability along with a proven track record of the plant supplier was a main concern. Minmized waste water was another important point to fit in the overall green concept of the whole paper mill.
Plant start up
2020
Treated water
Condensate and city water
Solution
The RO process includes proprietary Faktor X technology to optimize recovery. The plant reliability was further enhanced by a selecting a specific ion exchange process design.
Capacity
200+30 m³/h
Customer benefits
80% reduction of fresh water consumption due to the integrated water treatment plant
The existing plant of a third party company was built to remove iron and desalinate the water by means of membranes. It suffered from design flaws that reduced availibility due to repeated break-downs in various parts of the plant. Frequent membrane replacements had to be carried out due to hydrauliic overload.
Objective & Challenge
Review of the complete plant. Develop a concept to retrofit the plant in close co-operation with the customer. Implement the solution in the plant. Challenge: very tight schedule to keep plant down-time as short as possible.
Plant start up
2010
Treated water
Brackish water
Solution
The plant was re-engineered with a focus on reducing hydraulic loads and operation automation for automatic adaption to varying water demands. The control cabinet including other hardware and programming were part of the scope. Equipment was added or replaced only where absolutely necessary to keep the costs low.
With the construction of a modern combined cycle power plant in the paper mill of a large international group, the boiler feed water treatment was also put out to tender. The feed water was to be changed from well water to river water in order to ensure security of supply.
Objective & Challenge
Complete new construction of the make-up water treatment and condensate recycling with sustainable, state-of-the-art technology.
Challenge: the river water shows extreme, seasonal fluctuations in quality with high colloidal silica content at times.
Plant start up
2012
Treated water
River water and condensate
Solution
As the first of its kind in a German paper mill, the river water is pre-cleaned with innovative ultrafiltration technology, which is operated in an environmentally friendly manner without flocculants. Sustainability, environmental friendliness and low life cycle costs also determined the selection of the other process technologies.
Capacity
120 +220 m³/h
Customer benefits
Very reliable plant operation for more than 6 years
Cost savings in comparison to previous water treatment unit
The environmentally friendly design of the water treatment plant meets the eco-friendly objectives of the customer
The customer, a paper mill producing WFC, WFU and specialty papers intended to further reduce production costs and environmental impact by optimizing its fresh water consumption.
Objective & Challenge
Recycle a part of the secondary effluent of the existing activated sludge plant to be used as process water.
Challenge: quality targets included a nearly complete removal of all impurities and color along with desalinating the waste water.
Plant start up
2018
Treated water
Secondary effluent
Solution
A multi-barrier filtration process including an innovative two-stage membrane plant featuring ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis has been implemented. It is particularly remarkable that the UF plant runs environmentaly friendly without any flocculation. The heat of the waste water can be re-used in the process.
Capacity
100 m³/h
Customer benefits
Yearly fresh water savings of ~ 850,000 m³/h
Reduced waste water discharge fees
Savings in power consumption of annually 9,500 MWh, thus reducing the CO2 footprint by 1,700 tons
French