Odense University Hospital (OUH) has gained considerable savings due to reduced water and energy consumption based on water treatment plant designed and supplied by EUROWATER.

The hospital is one of three university hospitals in Denmark. Thousands of patients are treated at OUH every day and it is OUH’s expressed ambition to ensure that every patient receives highly qualified treatment and feels well treated in terms of nursing and care. In this ambition, access to water in the right quality at the right place plays an important role.

The hospital has a centralized water treatment plant. The raw water is supplied by the local water utility. The hospital require reliable and robust water treatment and it is important to exploit new and energy efficient technology in order to minimize the consumption of water, consumables and energy.

The hospital needs demineralized water for applications such as sterilizers, autoclaves, steam boilers, etc. The hospital uses softened water partly as feed water for three reverse osmosis units and partly for bedpan washers, washing processes, washing machines, dishwashers, etc.

Simplified, the water treatment plant consists of a larger softener (output: 50 m³/h) and three RO units (output: 3 x 7 m³/h).

Softening prevents calcium deposits in technical installations such as heat exchangers and heating surfaces. The softener for OUH is designed for safe and reliable operation, long life as well as low water and salt consumption. This is possible due to a long list of standard features of the EUROWATER softener type STFA:

• Two-tank unit for continuous water consumption with at least one tank in operation.
• The control system enables precise programming of plant capacity according to water hardness.
• Volume-controlled unit which fully utilizes its capacity as the number of regenerations is adapted to the current consumption pattern combined with quality monitoring of the residual hardness in the water.
• A nozzle plate ensuring optimum utilization of salt, ion exchange resin and backwash.
• The filter tanks are of steel and coated with corrosion-resistant epoxy paint. Steel tanks are less susceptible to changes in pressure.
• Minimizing and re-using water used for regeneration.

RO units from EUROWATER are used for producing demineralized water. They retain more than 98 % of the salts in the water and remove pyrogenic substances as well as microorganisms. The RO process is chemical-free and causes no wastewater problems. The hospital uses a special series of RO units, RO-PLUS, characterized by an extra high water recovery - up to 90 % - without compromising operating safety or water quality.