01 What Happened

Veolia Water Technologies announced support for two Sabesp upgrades in São Paulo state. The Rio Grande drinking-water plant will receive an ultrafiltration installation rated at 725 L/s. At the Campos do Jordão wastewater plant, MBR treatment capacity is planned to increase from 250 L/s to 460 L/s. The release establishes the technologies and capacities but does not disclose design flux, net recovery, effluent guarantees, project value or commissioning schedule.

02 Key Takeaways

  • 01 Rio Grande: 725 L/s of new UF capacity, approximately 62,600 m³/d on a nameplate basis.
  • 02 Campos do Jordão: MBR capacity rises by 210 L/s, an increase of about 84%.
  • 03 Owner-side due diligence should focus on net output, membrane redundancy, cleaning waste, energy use and whole-life replacement cost.

03 Why It Matters

A 725 L/s ultrafiltration addition is equivalent to roughly 62,600 m³/d of nominal treatment capacity.

That nameplate figure is not the same as dependable net production. Procurement and design reviews should test recovery after backwash and chemically enhanced backwash, feed-temperature effects on flux, pretreatment requirements, membrane-train redundancy, integrity-testing frequency, clean-in-place availability and the hydraulic capacity of residuals handling. These variables determine whether UF stabilizes downstream operation or simply transfers solids and chemical demand to the waste stream.

04 ATLAS Engineering View

Increasing the Campos do Jordão MBR from 250 to 460 L/s raises nominal capacity by about 84%, to almost 39,700 m³/d. The critical design checks are peak wet-weather flow, fine-screen reliability, biological loading, SRT and MLSS operating windows, oxygen-transfer efficiency, membrane-air scour, permeate pumping, cleaning strategy and sludge disposal. MBR can reduce footprint and deliver low suspended solids, but lifecycle value depends on energy intensity, membrane replacement, chemical cleaning, operator capability and process redundancy—not membrane area alone.

05 Sources