Pall Corporation’s plant in Cortland, USA, achieved a milestone on 6 June 2011 by completing and shipping its 500th Pall Aria™ municipal water system. The company is a leading supplier of standardized membrane water treatment systems to municipalities and industry.
The system shipped was a Pall Aria AP-2 unit, one of a series of packaged membrane systems to meet the water treatment requirements of small communities.
The Cortland plant’s history in municipal water goes back to 1998, when the first system was sold to the city of Chandler, Arizona, for wastewater treatment. Pall devised the system to help the city meet new regulatory guidelines for public health and safety from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2004, Pall supplied a 400,000 GPD (1,500 m³/d) AP-4 unit to Groton, a village only 10 miles (16 km) from Cortland. Since then, municipal water system sales have become one of the fastest growing segments of Pall’s business, with associated revenues in Cortland more than doubling in the past five years.
Pall Aria systems are capable of producing drinking water from almost any raw water source. Collectively, the 500 systems produce over 130 MGD (490,000 m³/d) of purified water for communities and industry. Using state-of-the-art hollow-fiber microfiltration (MF) or ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, the systems transform contaminated water into potable water that is free from harmful bacteria, cysts, and particles.
To desalinate seawater, the MF or UF unit can be augmented with a reverse-osmosis membrane system. Requiring minimal manpower for operation and maintenance, Pall systems can boost local water production on a permanent or temporary basis.