Green desalination plant to open this year
A LOCALLY designed solar-powered water purification system that uses an activated carbon filter made from locally sourced macadamia nut shells, Kusini Water, will launch its first desalination plant in Cape Town this year.
In partnership with Red Bull, the Kusini Water plant at the V&A Waterfront will be capable of producing enough fresh water for more than 4800 households a day.
Kusini Water will be sold to households in affluent areas, and for every litre bought, 20 litres will be given to communities on the Cape Flats.
Profits from the plant will go towards the construction and operation of a future plant planned for the Cape Flats.
Construction is scheduled to be completed in September, with an official launch pegged for the end of October.
Kusini Water founder Murendeni Mafumo said the aim of his initiative was to bring about a systemic change in communities underserved in water and sanitation.
Kusini Water launched its first Kusini Water system nearly two years ago in Shayandima, Limpopo, and its first mobile container launched in October last year, supplying water for the community of Extension 10 in eMalahleni West.
The Cape Town desalination plant will obtain seawater from offshore marine waters and discharge concentrated brine effluent through pipeline infrastructure.
Kusini Water’s system can treat water from any source, removing 99.9999% of all bacteria and viruses.
It can produce 40 times more water than reverse osmosis, the current best practice, and uses about half the energy.
Mafumo said that over the last five months his team had done extensive environmental impact analyses, and had chosen a location with no aquatic life to impact.
“Our brine discharge will be done through existing sewer infrastructure and with the dilution factors considered, our discharge will have very little to change the geography; the entire area is artificial,” he said.
No single-use plastic bottles will be sold from the site, the only plastic used will be reusable bottles with all the old ones used to build eco-bricks: thermally insulating bricks.