Description of Plant
The water treatment plant at Gobabis employs a conventional purification process for turning dam water into drinking water.
As a first step one or two coagulants are thoroughly mixed with the raw-water. To reduce the corrosive properties of the water, a slurry of lime is also added. The mixing of these chemicals takes place in a so called flash mixer which ensures even distribution of these chemicals in the raw-water.
From the flash mixer the water then enters the flocculator (see photo above) where the chemicals react with the suspended clay particles in the raw-water to form bigger particles referred to as ‘floc’.
In the next two water treatment steps at Gobabis these floc-particles are now removed from the water. After leaving the flocculator, the water enters the horizontal settling basin, where the floc settles to the bottom of the basin and is withdrawn as a slurry.
The clean water from the top of the settling basin then enters 3 rapid gravity sand filters where the rest of the floc is removed.
Thereafter the water is disinfected by chlorine gas and then distributed to NamWater’s bulk clients mainly the Municipality of Gobabis .
