Pump test of boreholes in South Africa showed good results
A group of drinking water experts from Aarhus Vand performed pump tests of existing boreholes in the city of Tshwane in South Africa. Several of the boreholes showed high performance and they seem to have more capacity which could potentially reduce the city’s import of drinking water.
In Tshwane in South Africa 24/7 delivery of clean drinking water is not a matter of course. 80 percent of their water is imported from other parts of South Africa and expensively purchased through the state. The city has been assigned a water license that has been exceeded for several years and delivery is sometimes challenged. Therefore, the water supply is sometimes cut off and, in some places, drinking water is only supplied periodically.
Aarhus Vand cooperate with the city of Tshwane. And recently a group of drinking water experts from Aarhus Vand went to Tshwane to investigate if more drinking water could be extracted from existing boreholes enabling the city to produce more of its own water supply.
Pump test showed potential for more water extraction
The location of the boreholes is situated in an area of protected nature with wild animals living around it. And a team went out there to carry out pump tests.
We concluded that the aquifer performs very well and that there is a potential to extract more water from some of the boreholes. From our initial analysis, the water quality also seems good.
He explains further, that extracting more water of course needs to be sustainable. In order to make the abstraction of drinking water sustainable, the aquifer recharge should balance or exceed the total aquifer abstraction even though the aquifer show permeability. Thus, further studies lie ahead before a decision can be made if the citizens of Tshwane should have more of their own groundwater for drinking water.
Proactive leak detection can save water
Another way of gaining more water is to reduce water loss. And this is also part of our cooperation in Tshwane. The city has a water loss or non-revenue water of around 40 percent.
“Active leak detection by performing leak detection with acoustic equipment and monitoring night time flow are means to locate leaks and a repair of the identified leaks help reduce the water loss”, says Rasmus
The plan is to perform leak detection in a pilot area of Tshwane and demonstrate the business case of doing active leak detection and reducing leak runtime. This will support the strategies of City of Tshwane and give savings on the city budgets and save a scarce water resource.
The project is realized together with Aarhus Municipality through funds from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.