Northern Health and Social Care Trust

The Client's Needs

The Northern Health and Social Care Trust were experiencing a number of issues with the quality of the purified water feeding the endoscopy departments throughout the four main hospitals in The Trust.

The original water systems were failing to meet the regulatory requirements for bacteria and silicate levels and this was also leading to reliability issues with the purified water. De-ionisation Cylinders were added to the original systems and this helped to reduce the silicate levels but lead to a buildup of bacteria in the treated water.

A decision was made to replace the purified water systems throughout the Trust and Veolia Water Technologies Ireland was chosen as the preferred solutions provider out of a number of specialist water treatment companies.

The Solution

Veolia Water Technologies designed a solution that would ensure all of The Trusts requirements were addressed. By installing a Veolia Osiris Twin Pass Reverse Osmosis System, the first RO would remove 95% of the silicate from the feed water, that treated water is then passed through the second RO membrane further reducing the silicate levels to below the specified 0.2ppm. The twin pass system further guarantees the performance for silicate over the lifetime of the RO membranes.

The design of the Osiris also addressed the issues of bacterial failures and offered guaranteed bacterial reduction that would meet specified regulatory standards.

The Osiris is a compact design with generation, storage and distribution all on the one skid. The majority of connections, engineering work and pre-testing are completed off site in a hygiene controlled manufacturing environment. This ensures that installation and commissioning can be completed with minimal disruption to the hospital and the Osiris design ensures minimal space is used. In the case of Antrim Area Hospital, there was limited availability of space in the plant room and due to the critical nature of the endoscopy department to hospital it was critical that there was minimal disruption to the department.

Results

Since installing the Veolia Osiris Twin Pass Osmosis System the hospital has recorded no issues with bacteria and silicate in the treated water and has been consistently meeting regulatory requirements. The system enables automatic thermal sanitisation and routine maintenance with no unnecessary downtime for the endoscopy department. Sanitisation is completely automatic using water generated from with the Osiris.

The system enables automatic sanitisation and routine maintenance with no unnecessary downtime for the endoscopy department. Sanitisation is completely automatic using water generated from within the Osiris.

Since installing the five Osiris twin pass Reverse Osmosis systems in the Northern Trust, other Trust have seen the benefits of the twin pass Reverse Osmosis design and have purchased similar Osiris systems. These include The Southern Health and Social Care Trust. The design is now considered the standard approach for Endoscopy in Northern Ireland.