Water & Wastewater Asia September/October 2018

IN PERSON | 21
processing industry. We are targeting the
hydrocarbon industry as there are many
requirements for water treatment and our
analysis has shown that a large part of our
technologies portfolio offer solutions in the
water aspect of that industry.
Q: How do the water challenges
and conditions differ in
Singapore and in other SE Asian/
Asian countries?
MN: Singapore has done tremendously
well over the past few years and they have
become an example to many municipalities
around the world, in terms of adapting new
technologies.
The challenges really are whether they
continue to encourage the development
and implementation of new technologies in
a sustainable way.
We are one of the very first ones in Asia
to implement brine electro-chlorination as
an alternative method for disinfection for
potable water. And we are very pleased
to be there from the beginning in piloting
the technology for PUB when they were
looking at various alternative disinfection
technologies. Because of its success, we
sold a number of different brine electrochlorination
systems.
The adoption of newer and alternative
technologies to meet their water needs is
really something Singapore need to sustain
moving forward and that is something that
in the past differentiated them from the rest
of Asia.
Q: What are the newly improved
technologies and features found
in the CAPITAL CONTROLS ® Ozone
Generators?
MN: The biggest improvement is really to
use more updated electronics and console
that can be remotely monitored. The
digitalisation of components is an ongoing
task which everyone is tackling now.
The other thing is localisation and
regionalisation of the products. In China,
ozone has a very important place in their
water treatment industry. We are managing
our infrastructure there by including local
cross-engineers and local cross-institutions
expertise to not only bring products into the
market, but to deliver them together with
the support team that is within the country.
What we do very well is transferring the
knowledge and technology from our centres
of excellence to the regional areas. To be able
to support the product at local and regional
level is very important, and in any market,
providing support is critical to sustain the
growth of the market in that country. We
have been developing and strengthening
our after-sales capabilities globally for at
least seven years.
Years ago, we were more in a reactive mode
in terms of after sales, so we were basically
reacting to what the market needed. But
we realised that our customers needed
continuous support to be able to get the full
life expectancy and value out of the products
and the only way to meet this requirement
was to be a lot more proactive in working
with them. It is not only about making
good business sense, but also to ensure
that the customers are satisfied with their
purchases over the whole life of the asset
they purchased.
Q: What is the cost difference:
Ozone versus Chlorine Gas?
MN: Ozone is a little expensive on the capital
expenditure (capex) side, but it is not very
expensive on the operational expenditure
(opex) side, because you produce ozone from
air or oxygen, so you don’t have chemicals
to add. Other disinfection technologies have
lower capex but higher opex.
That is why some end users look at the
whole life cost instead when they analyse the
different technologies, because sometimes
the right technology is the one that has the
least life costs rather than just looking at
the capex of it.
Life costs include the power required, raw
chemicals, the storage, the maintenance
time, the complexities of the maintenance
etc… there are a lot of things to look at, but
it usually can be the best way to analyse
various disinfection technologies. WWA
Water & Wastewater Asia • September / October 2018