Buyers who send out a ceramic water recycling system RFQ without lab data or a production schedule are not getting competing quotes—they are getting competing assumptions. Vendors who cannot see real TSS loads, flow peaks, or reuse quality targets will size the membrane system around generic figures, and those figures become the baseline for commissioning. When actual hydraulic loads or fouling rates arrive, the system either underperforms or requires expensive chemistry adjustments and extended startup. The document you issue before a single vendor meeting determines whether you close the gap between planned and actual performance, or pay for it in change orders and permit risk.
Provide flow profile and production schedule
Flow rate is not a single number. Vendors need to understand the shape of demand across a shift cycle, not just the daily average. A facility running three shifts with a morning washdown peak will impose a hydraulic surge that a system sized to average flow cannot handle without buffer tank capacity or membrane bank redundancy. If you submit only an average volume, the vendor has no way to distinguish between a stable continuous process and a batch operation with sharp peaks—and that distinction directly controls the sizing of grit removal, dosing contact time, and sedimentation residence time.
The production schedule matters for a second reason: future capacity. If the plant is expanding, or if a second line is planned within five years, stating that in the RFQ allows vendors to design with staged expansion in mind rather than delivering a system that requires complete replacement. The difference between a modular design and a fixed-capacity unit may not appear in the initial price but becomes visible as soon as the expansion conversation starts.
Include daily volume in m³/day, peak hourly flow, average flow, and the number of operating days per year. Also note whether flow is continuous, batch, or seasonal. A ceramic membrane system sized for a 13 MGD continuous industrial case—like the xAI Memphis plant—operates under fundamentally different hydraulic assumptions than a batch-cycle ceramic or stone processing facility, even if the daily totals look comparable. Scale examples are useful for illustrating what the technology can handle; they are not design inputs for your site.
Include TSS turbidity pH and sludge sampling data
Vendors cannot confirm whether a ceramic membrane system is appropriate for your wastewater, or size it correctly, without representative feed water characterization. The most common mistake at this stage is submitting a single sample taken during normal operation, then discovering during commissioning that peak TSS loads during equipment washdowns or product changeovers are two to three times higher. Those peaks drive membrane fouling rates, backwash frequency, and ultimately the cleaning chemical consumption that determines lifecycle cost.
For suspended solids, ISO 11923 provides a gravimetric method for TSS determination that gives consistent, comparable results across laboratories—useful when you need to compare samples taken at different times or by different contractors. For turbidity, ISO 7027-1 covers nephelometric measurement and is widely used in industrial wastewater characterization. Neither standard sets a pass/fail threshold for your application; they define how to measure so that the numbers mean the same thing to your team and to every vendor receiving the RFQ.
The minimum data package should include TSS (average and peak), turbidity (NTU), pH range across the production cycle, temperature range, and a description of any chemical inputs to the process that may reach the wastewater stream—surfactants, cutting oils, coagulants from upstream processes, or any compounds that affect membrane compatibility. Sludge characterization matters separately: particle size distribution and settlability affect whether a Tour de sédimentation verticale pour le recyclage des eaux usées will achieve the settling rate the vendor assumes, or whether upstream grit removal is needed before the membrane stage.
If your facility has not done recent wastewater sampling, treat that as a pre-RFQ task, not a post-award task. Vendors who receive no feed water data will build in safety factors that add cost and may still miss the real fouling challenge.
State reuse points and quality requirements
The treated water has to meet a quality specification somewhere. Without a declared reuse point and associated quality requirement, vendors will target a generic treated effluent standard that may or may not match what your cooling tower, process loop, or discharge permit actually requires. That mismatch is invisible at the quote stage and surfaces during commissioning when the water quality achievable by the proposed system is tested against the conditions your downstream equipment actually needs.
Reuse paths vary significantly in their quality sensitivity. A closed-loop cooling circuit may have strict limits on suspended solids, conductivity, and biological loading to protect heat exchangers, while a once-through cooling application may be more tolerant. The xAI Memphis ceramic membrane bioreactor produces reclaimed water that supplies both the TVA Allen power station cooling and Nucor Steel cooling operations—two different industrial users with their own quality requirements that had to be defined before the system was designed, not after it was built.
| Reuse Point | xAI Memphis Example | Quality Requirement to Specify in RFQ |
|---|---|---|
| Power station cooling | Cooled TVA Allen power station | Grey water accepted for cooling; specify quality parameters required for your facility |
| Steel plant cooling | Cooled Nucor Steel | Grey water accepted for cooling; specify quality parameters required for your facility |
| Industrial cooling loops (general) | High-quality grey water produced for cooling loops | Define required quality standards for reuse (e.g., greywater quality as in the project) |
For each reuse point in your RFQ, specify the required quality parameters—TSS limit, turbidity limit, pH range, any conductivity or biological constraints—rather than referring generically to “grey water quality.” If discharge to a municipal sewer or receiving water body is the fallback when the reuse system is offline, include the permit limits for that stream as well. Vendors need both sets of numbers to design the treatment train and the bypass logic correctly.
Define footprint utilities automation and installation boundary
Physical constraints shape the system design before any process decision. If you specify available floor area, ceiling height, and structural loading limits, vendors can determine whether a vertical sedimentation configuration fits within the space or whether a horizontal layout is required. If you do not specify these, the vendor’s standard package may arrive on site and require civil modifications that add weeks to installation.
Utilities need the same precision. State available electrical supply (voltage, phase, amperage), compressed air availability and pressure, and whether a water supply for backwash or chemical dilution is already present. The automation boundary question is particularly important: vendors will quote different control architecture depending on whether you expect a standalone PLC with local HMI, integration into a plant-wide SCADA system, or a remote monitoring interface. Each of these represents a different scope of supply, and without a clear boundary statement, two quotes may appear comparable in price while assuming entirely different levels of integration work.
The installation boundary definition also clarifies who is responsible for civil works, piping connections, electrical terminations, and commissioning support. A vendor quoting equipment-only supply has a different cost and risk profile than one quoting a skid-mounted system with field commissioning included. If your procurement team needs to interface with a site contractor, the RFQ must say so and define where vendor scope ends and contractor scope begins.
Specify chemical supply and sludge handling scope
Chemical dosing systems require coagulant and flocculant supply—and who procures, stores, and replenishes those chemicals is a scope question that should be resolved in the RFQ, not during contract negotiation. If the vendor supplies a Système intelligent de dosage de produits chimiques PAM/PAC, that system requires PAC and PAM supply that typically falls to the owner unless otherwise agreed. If you leave this undefined, you may receive a fully functional dosing system with no defined chemical supply chain, and the plant cannot operate until that gap is closed.
Sludge handling scope carries a similar risk. A ceramic water recycling system generates concentrated sludge, and the volume and handling method depend directly on the feed water solids loading and the dewatering equipment selected. Buyers who do not declare the sludge route—cake to landfill, cake to third-party processor, liquid sludge to municipal sewer under permit—force vendors to assume a generic handling arrangement. That assumption affects whether a filter press is included, what cake dryness is targeted, and whether sludge storage capacity is needed between pressing cycles. For reference on how to size dewatering equipment against actual slurry volume, the process described in Comment calculer la capacité requise du filtre-presse en fonction du volume quotidien de boue et de la concentration de solides ? illustrates why the daily solids mass, not just the water volume, drives the press sizing decision.
State in the RFQ: the required sludge output form (liquid or dewatered cake), target cake moisture content if a filter press is included, and where the sludge leaves vendor scope. If a Filtre-presse à plaques et cadres encastrés is to be included in the system, specify whether automatic plate shifting and cloth washing are required, as these affect both equipment cost and operator labor requirements.
Ask vendors to state design assumptions clearly
A bid comparison only works if all vendors are designing to the same problem. When buyers receive three quotes with different flow assumptions, different feed water characterizations, and different definitions of what constitutes treated effluent, the lowest price is almost never the lowest-cost option—it is usually the bid that assumed the most favorable conditions.
Requiring vendors to state their design assumptions explicitly creates two immediate benefits. First, it makes bids technically comparable because you can identify where assumptions diverge and ask targeted clarifying questions. Second, it transfers accountability: a vendor who has declared in writing that the design is based on a TSS of 800 mg/L cannot later claim the feed water was unusually difficult when the actual feed comes in at 1,200 mg/L and the system underperforms.
The assumption disclosure request should cover at minimum: the flow rate and peak factor used, the feed water quality parameters assumed, the reuse quality target the system is designed to achieve, the basis for chemical dosing rates, and any conditions under which the vendor reserves the right to revise the design or performance guarantee. Vendors who resist this requirement are signaling that their bid includes significant embedded margin to cover unknown variables—or that their quote is not a system design proposal at all.
Require acceptance criteria before comparing price
Price comparison without defined acceptance criteria is not procurement—it is a budget estimate exercise with expensive downstream consequences. If you do not specify what the system must demonstrably achieve before you accept it, you have no contractual basis for rejecting a system that operates but fails to deliver the water savings or quality the project was built around.
The xAI Memphis ceramic membrane bioreactor case illustrates the potential scale of what a well-characterized system can achieve: 13 million gallons per day of treated capacity, annual water savings of 4.745 billion gallons, and a freshwater offset equivalent to roughly 10 percent of the Memphis aquifer’s daily withdrawal. These are site-specific outcomes derived from that project’s water balance and operational goals. They are not benchmarks for your facility, but they demonstrate that when acceptance criteria are defined with enough precision—treatment capacity, reclaimed water quality, measurable water savings—the system’s performance can be tracked and verified. ISO 46001:2019 offers a planning framework for structuring water efficiency objectives and targets that can help translate operational goals into measurable acceptance criteria your procurement team can carry into contract negotiations.
| Paramètre de performance | xAI Memphis Demonstration | Acceptance Criterion to Specify in RFQ |
|---|---|---|
| Économies d'eau annuelles | 4.745 billion gallons/year | Required annual water savings (gallons or m³) based on facility water balance |
| Freshwater offset | ~10% of Memphis aquifer daily withdrawal | Target reduction in freshwater makeup or aquifer withdrawal percentage applicable to your site |
| Treatment capacity | 13 million gallons per day (MGD) | Minimum daily treatment capacity required (MGD or m³/day) with design/surge factors |
| Reclaimed water quality | High-quality grey water suitable for cooling | Specify required water quality standards for reuse (e.g., greywater quality as achieved in this project) |
The risk of omitting acceptance criteria is not abstract. A vendor whose system meets a vague “treated to reuse standard” has fulfilled the contract even if the treated water conductivity is too high for your cooling circuit, or if the system requires twice the projected chemical input to maintain that quality under peak load. Define the minimum daily treatment capacity with a stated surge factor, the maximum allowable treated water TSS and turbidity at the reuse point, and the chemical consumption ceiling over which the system design is considered non-conforming. Those three parameters alone will eliminate bids that cannot survive real operating conditions.
The ceramic water recycling system RFQ is the document that locks in your system’s performance potential—or forecloses it. Buyers who treat it as a price-gathering exercise will find that the gaps they left open in feed water characterization, reuse quality requirements, and sludge scope become change orders, startup delays, and integration problems that cost more than the upfront sampling and scoping work would have. The difference between a bid that delivers the project and one that fails commissioning is almost always traceable to data the buyer chose not to collect before issuing the RFQ.
Before you finalize the document, confirm that each vendor will be working from the same flow profile, the same wastewater characterization data, and the same declared reuse quality targets. Then require each vendor to state the assumptions behind their design, and define the acceptance criteria against which you will evaluate performance before final payment. That sequence—data, boundary definition, assumption transparency, performance criteria—is what makes price comparison meaningful.
Questions fréquemment posées
Q: We cannot obtain peak TSS or flow data in time for the RFQ deadline. Can we still release the RFQ using only average daily values?
A: Yes, but you must direct vendors to state their assumed peak factors and fouling design margins explicitly in the proposal. Without measured peaks, the system may be undersized for real surge conditions, so include a contractual obligation for the vendor to verify assumptions during detailed engineering and to flag any cost or schedule impact if actual peaks later exceed the bid assumptions.
Q: After we have sent out the RFQ with all the requested data, what is the most important step before comparing the returned prices?
A: Reject any bid that does not clearly declare its design assumptions—flow basis, feed water quality basis, reuse quality target, and chemical dosing rationale. Then normalize the remaining bids by asking each shortlisted vendor to confirm or adjust their scope to match a single common set of baseline assumptions, so that price comparison reflects equivalent technical scope.
Q: At what treatment scale—e.g., a small workshop recycling less than 20 m³/day—does providing the full data package become unnecessary, and can we rely on vendor standard designs?
A: There is no fixed threshold, but if your process produces a highly consistent, low-solids wastewater stream with no batch surges and no chemical variability, a reduced data set may be acceptable. Even then, supply the available characterisation data and explicitly ask the vendor to note any performance risks they would normally resolve with additional sampling, so the residual uncertainty is transparent before you proceed.
Q: Which costs more over the system lifecycle: investing in third-party wastewater characterisation before issuing the RFQ, or accepting a vendor’s generous safety factor that adds membrane area and chemical consumption?
A: Upfront sampling almost always costs far less. Exaggerated safety factors compound continuously through higher capital cost, increased energy and chemical use, and more frequent cleaning cycles, while a one-off characterisation report removes the root uncertainty that causes vendors to inflate their designs.
Q: We are retrofitting an existing settlement tank with a ceramic membrane skid, not building a new treatment line. Is the structured RFQ process described here still worth the effort?
A: Yes—often even more so. Retrofit projects have hard constraints on available footprint, existing pipe elevations, and tie-in points that make data gaps directly visible as rework during installation. Providing precise space, utility, and wastewater characterisation data in the RFQ prevents a vendor’s standard package from arriving and requiring unexpected civil modifications or extended downtime.
