May 28 2008
GE, a worldwide partner of the Olympic Games, today announced it has donated two advanced water treatment systems to provide clean drinking water for more than 60,000 Chinese residents in Dongguang City and surrounding villages. Dedicated as a gift to the people of China, the systems are designed to help protect human health by removing fluoride for clean, sustainable potable water and to demonstrate how GE's broad portfolio of water treatment technologies can be quickly and cost-effectively used by China's communities.
Working in partnership with the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) in China, GE, the official provider to the Olympic Games of water treatment facilities and services, will install and startup a full-scale water treatment plant in Dongguang City during the summer of 2008. GE is also supplying a mobile water treatment plant that will purify water for neighboring villages. This is the first time that an advanced mobile water treatment system will be used in China to bring clean water to areas that are not within reach of the nation’s centralized municipal water infrastructure. GE’s mobile water treatment solutions can treat virtually any water source and could potentially play a key role in helping China meet its goal of providing safe, reliable water supplies by 2015 to more than 300 million people living in rural areas.
“GE is extremely proud to celebrate the 2008 Olympic Games with our donation of ecomagination water treatment technology to the people of China,” said Jeff Garwood, president and CEO, GE Water & Process Technologies. “We are committed to leveraging GE’s broad portfolio of water solutions to help China achieve its clean water objectives for urban and rural citizens. The experience that we gain from this project will strengthen our ability to further help China and other nations leapfrog traditional infrastructure challenges to deliver clean water to hundreds of millions of people in the world’s remote communities.”
“These technologies will be a great benefit to the 60,000 Chinese citizens both now and after the Olympic Games in years to come,” said Li Yangbin, Director of the Center for Rural Drinking Water Safety, Ministry of Water Resources. “We are excited to collaborate with GE on this project to help accelerate a clean water source to thousands of people.”
Incorporating GE’s ecomagination-certified reverse osmosis membranes, the water treatment plants will remove virtually all bacteria, viruses, particles and dissolved pollutants from the water. In Dongguang City, treated water will be distributed through municipal infrastructure, while in outlying villages, the mobile treatment system will make regular visits to fill storage tanks with treated water. GE offers the world’s largest fleet of mobile water solutions that enable quick, response to for a full range of temporary or long-term water and wastewater treatment needs.
The advanced water treatment technologies that GE is donating today are part of a larger effort to help China implement an environmentally sustainable water management solution during the Olympic Games and beyond. The company has implemented several ecomagination water solutions for the Olympic Games including:
- China’s first advanced membrane rainwater recycling system at Beijing’s National Stadium to help maintain a sustainable supply of water for landscape irrigation, facility maintenance and a fire-suppression system;
- An ultrafiltration water reuse system at the Qinghe Water Reclamation Plant, which will recycle municipal wastewater for landscaping purposes during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games; and
- An energy-efficient nanofiltration system that provides up to 16 cubic meters of clean water per hour—equal to 32,000 bottles of water – for the National Stadium.