Henriksdal wastewater treatment plant, Stockholm, will become the world’s largest MBR facility

GE will provide Stockholm Vatten with membrane bioreactor equipment for the Henriksdal municipal wastewater treatment facility to upgrade the existing technology, making it the largest MBR plant in the world. The Henriksdal facility is responsible for treating two thirds of the municipal wastewater for the city of Stockholm, Sweden and, once the upgrade is complete, will process up to 864 million litres of wastewater per day.

The City of Stockholm has one of the fastest growing populations in Europe, and Stockholm Vatten, the city’s water company, was tasked with both expanding the capacity of the facility and producing effluent of higher quality to meet the country’s environmental commitments under the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) and the E.U. Water Directive. The Henriksdal wastewater treatment plant, located in the centre of Stockholm, is one of the world’s largest treatment plants located inside rock. With over 18 kilometres of tunnels blasted into the rock structure, this presents a huge challenge to expand the facility in the same relative footprint. These drivers steered Stockholm Vatten to select GE’s LEAPmbr technology as the right solution for the retrofit and upgrade.

At the core of LEAPmbr is GE’s ZeeWeed 500 membrane, an advanced ultrafiltration technology that separates solids, bacteria and viruses from water or wastewater. More than 1,000 plants worldwide use this technology to produce superior quality water.

As part of the contract, GE will be delivering a scope that encompasses the design, supply and servicing of the entire membrane filtration package. The contract will be completed in multiple stages and delivered over a period of four to five years. Design will be completed in 2015 and first shipments will begin in 2016.