Water management
SkyHydrant system: To help the UN achieve the goal of reducing the number of people without access to clean water to one half of today's level by 2015, a team from Siemens Water Technologies has developed the portable water-purification system SkyHydrant and established the SkyJuice Foundation to ensure the system will be used effectively in developing countries and disaster areas. SkyHydrant purifies unclean water by pumping it through a membrane of ultra-fine fibers. The result is exceptionally pure drinking water that surpasses World Health Organization (WHO) quality specifications. The system does not require electric power or purification chemicals, and with annual costs of less than 20 euro cents per person, it is affordable for even the poorest communities in developing countries, including those communities affected by climatic disasters. To date, the SkyJuice Foundation has installed around 450 systems in 16 countries on 4 continents.
Water Purification - Desalination Power: Siemens has won a competition staged in June 2008 at the first "International Water Week" exhibition in Singapore. The Singapore government announced at the exhibition that it was providing USD 3 million in research funding for the "Singapore Innovative Technology Challenge." The goal was to find a technology capable of cutting in half the cost of converting seawater into drinking water and thus help the government's efforts in establishing a secure water supply for the country. The concept of Siemens was not to desalinate seawater by means of energy-intensive heating and vaporizing processes, but by channeling water through an electric field. This reduces energy consumption per cubic meter of water from the ten kilowatt hours (kWh) common at conventional facilities to just 1.5 kWh. Even the best of the previous technologies based on reverse osmosis used twice this amount of energy.
Pure Water: Recycling Wastewater: Siemens has assisted the Singapore government in supplying much needed fresh drinking water as about half the country's requirement of water currently needs to be imported from Malaysia. Siemens provides a wastewater purification system which filters water to required World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. A water purification plant in Kranji is now being expanded. By 2012, its capacity will be boosted to 210,000 mÂł per day in order to meet 20 % of the city's water requirements. The additional expansion is possible because the Siemens recycling process is cost-effective and much cheaper than other water purification methods such as desalination. Concerned about water resources, a number of delegations from other Asian countries have also expressed their in this technology.
Building management
State-of-the-art technology by Siemens is making it possible to reduce energy consumption in buildings by up to 30 %. Buildings, such as the New York Times Building (NYTB) and the 30 The Bond office complex in Sydney, demonstrate what can be achieved for people and the environment when sensors, special materials, energy supply systems, and information technology interact in an optimal manner. Siemens have developed building management systems that automatically monitor and control the air conditioning, water cooling, heating, fire alarm, and generation systems.
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