Tip of the day:
Remember to drink lots of water to replenish yourself during the
race. There will be 60 Newater bottles provided. 52 of them are for
contestants and 8 of them for officials.
NEWater is the product from a
multiple barrier water reclamation process. The first
barrier is the conventional wastewater treatment process whereby
the used water is treated to globally recognised standards in the
Water Reclamation Plants.
The second barrier is the first stage of the
NEWater production process known as Microfiltration
(MF). In this process, the treated used water is passed through
membranes to filter out and retained on the membrane surface
suspended solids, colloidal particles, disease-causing bacteria,
some viruses and protozoan cysts. The filtered water that goes
through the membrane contains only dissolved salts and organic
molecules.
The third barrier or the second stage of the NEWater production
process is known as Reverse Osmosis (RO). In RO, a semi-permeable
membrane is used. The semi-permeable membrane has very small
pores which only allow very small molecules like water molecules to
pass through. Consequently, undesirable contaminants such as
bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, nitrate, chloride, sulphate,
disinfection by-products, aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides etc,
cannot pass through the membrane. Hence, NEWater is RO water and is
free from viruses and bacteria and contains very low levels of
salts and organic matters.
At this stage, the water is already of a high grade water
quality. The fourth barrier or third stage of the NEWater
production process really acts as a further safety back-up to the
RO. In this stage, ultraviolet or UV disinfection is used to ensure
that all organisms are inactivated and the purity of the product
water guaranteed.
With the addition of some alkaline chemicals to restore the
acid-alkali or pH balance, the NEWater is now ready to be piped off
to its wide range of applications.
In fact, RO is a widely recognized and established technology
which has been used extensively in many other areas. This includes
the production of bottled drinking water and production of
ultra-clean water for the wafer fabrication and electronics
industry. RO is also becoming increasingly popular as one of the
technologies used in desalination of seawater for human
consumption. It is also used to recycle used water to drinking
water on space shuttles and on International Space Stations.
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