Integral water cycle

Global Omnium ensures the collection, treatment, distribution and supply of drinking water to more than 6 million people in 300 Spanish municipalities by managing all phases of the integral water cycle.

The Integral Water Cycle is the route taken by water from its raw capture in nature, up to its drinkable availability in our homes; and following its reverse cycle, the route taken by water back to nature duly purified.

The management of The Integrated Water Cycle is the main activity of Global Omnium for 125 years already, a long trajectory along which it has become a national reference. The commitment and responsibility of Global Omnium lies in its full rigor to preserve, manage and grow fresh water resources which are not inexhaustible. Thus, performs its services at all stages of the water cycle and assumes the collection, transportation, treatment and distribution of drinking water as well as the collection, waste treatment and return to its natural environment imprinting the least possible impact on environment.

For Global Omnium, every customer is unique, so that each service brings knowledge and technological capacity to provide the most appropriate solutions to every situation.

How is the Integral Water Cycle achieved?

The purification process is not necessarily done close to town or population served, so that drinking water has to be pumped through large pipes to reach its destination. This phase is called adduction.

Once in the municipality, water is distributed through a series of pipes of different sizes or diameters such that every point reaches the supply pressure and the required amount. Throughout the network there are elements of control, security, disinfection and discharge,actively ensuring better water distribution.

The distribution network ends in each of the entrances to the supplied buildings. These pipes are called water inlet connections. The maintenance of the distribution network in optimum operating conditions is the daily challenge of water supply companies.

Once consumed, the wastewater is channeled through sewerage and sanitation collectors up to the Wastewater Treatment Plants, which reintegrate it back into streams, rivers, sea and receiving media in general, to complete the cycle with guarantees.

The Wastewater Treatment Plants perform debugging in a confined space, that Nature customarily conducts in rivers and seas. This function is performed with much greater flow rates than the treatment capacity of Nature itself. Physical, chemical and biological processes combine here to turn treated water under conditions neither harmful to man or nature for discharge to a channel or sea.

The incorporation of new technologies and recovery of waste produced, called "sludge" are environmental objectives for operators of Wastewater Treatment Plants. So much so, that Global Omnium generates clean energy-biogas-, from cogeneration of extracted sludge at treatment plants after handling of wastewater.