Siemens Water Technologies (www.siemens.com/water) opened its Global Water Research and Development Center at the Singapore Public Utilities Board’s WaterHub building. Dr. Ruediger Knauf has been named director of the facility and will oversee the Siemens research and development activities in the region. This is the first step toward the company’s previously announced €25 million investment in water technology research and product development in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Global R&D Center will collaborate with Singapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB), universities, and environmental authorities on water and wastewater treatment projects. For its first project, Siemens will work with PUB and A*STAR’s Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) to improve the overall energy efficiency of its Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) process and identify opportunities for future product development.
With the Global R&D Center, Siemens expands Singapore into a technology and business hub for innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. The Water Technologies’ R&D Center will be a major research and development site for the Siemens water business, which currently has 15 R&D locations around the world and more than 140 scientists focused on water-related research and development activities.
The Public Utilities Board is a statutory board under the Singapore Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. It is the water agency that manages Singapore’s water supply, water catchment and sewerage in an integrated way. The Institute of High Performance Computing, established in 1998, is one of the research institutes supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR, www.a-star.edu.sg).
