At Sulzer we have made it our mission to help bring clean water to more people around the world. Whether through wastewater treatment and circularity or by enabling transportation, conservation and purification, we strive to positively impact the planet’s water crisis by ensuring water for life.
With almost half of the world’s population living in regions with significant water shortages, our goal is to tackle pressing water challenges with urgency. Our comprehensive portfolio of water treatment solutions addresses all stages of the water life cycle, and we are pleased to provide customized, fully integrated end-to-end solutions, as needed. Thanks to Sulzer solutions, some 280 million people around the world currently have access to drinking water. But there is still a lot to do.
As global demand for water increases, desalination will play an ever-important role in the delivery of fresh water for agriculture, industry and domestic use. Desalination addresses the vital issue of water scarcity by removing salts, bacteria and harmful metals and chemicals, and we continue to invest in the development of renewable energy sources to help improve its efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint. In 2022, for example, 95% of Sulzer’s Water business unit consumed low carbonated electricity. Meanwhile, our high efficiency pumps around the world provide a desalination capacity of over 20 million m3 water per day.
We also offer a portfolio of seven premium offerings under our Nordic Water brand to support screening, sedimentation, and filtration applications for municipal and industrial water, as well as wastewater treatment. In 2022, our installed water solutions helped industry and municipalities purify 52 million m3 water per day, which we are on target to match or exceed in 2023.
The world’s growing population is putting ever-increasing pressure on our earth’s resources, underscoring the need to develop circular systems and solutions that make better use of these precious assets. We aim to improve water quality, which better enables the reuse of waste products, while also reducing the carbon footprint through lower energy demand.
To date this year, we have delivered over 5 million pumps for wastewater – but we also provide a range of other wastewater treatment solutions. When the municipality of Simrishamn, Sweden wanted to protect its water environment by removing pharmaceuticals and hormone disturbing substances from its outgoing wastewater, it chose to complement its existing wastewater treatment plant with advanced treatment steps, including the DynaDisc, DynaSand, DynaSand Carbon and ozonation solutions from Nordic Water (a Sulzer brand).
These technologies, which reduce microplastics, antibiotics and harmful microorganisms, enabled filtering capacity down to a particle size of 0.006 mm, also reducing phosphorus levels to below 0.1 mg/l. In the end, suspended solids escaping the final sedimentation were reduced by over 70%. Organic matter was also significantly reduced, in turn resulting in less required ozone, which selectively reacts with pharmaceuticals.
Solutions like these underscore our commitment to developing sustainable and responsible water and wastewater treatment solutions to ensure a clean water supply.
As part of our strategy to ensure water for life, we focus on reducing water use through recycling, protecting water reserves, lowering the pollutant content of discharges, and by not acquiring new sites with existing groundwater contamination. Sulzer monitors its water consumption, discharge and losses with a specific focus on sites located in water-stressed areas. We map these sites using the World Resources Institute tools to monitor site dependency on water with design-optimized water management plans.
In Australia, where our XFP pumps were selected for the conversion of irrigation channels at the Mead pumping station in Victoria, Australia – our equipment is helping efforts to save 429 gigalitres of water in the region annually for production of large-quantity, high-quality crops. In a country that's no stranger to extreme weather, this project was a game-changer. It modernized the irrigation network to create efficiencies, save water and support the productivity of local irrigators, in turn securing a greener future for generations to come.
Whether it’s the possibility to reuse wastewater, ensuring optimal product design and longevity or reducing reliance on new materials, our goal is to ensure that waste is minimized, and that the resources we use are kept in circulation within an optimized eco-system for as long as possible. Approximately 95% of Sulzer’s pumps are serviceable by design and 95% of the materials used in our pumps are recyclable. We also aim to ensure our products are 100% repairable. By maximizing product service life through more circular retrofitting, upgrades, and repairs, we are improving our customers’ total cost of ownership with more sustainable, low-carbon water solutions. Our mission to bring clean water to more people is what we do. Following responsible practices is how we sustainably ensure water for life and help build a better world.
