Wash down treatment and water recycle systems for a transport company

Location : Hazelmere, WA

Background

The transport company with a fleet of 53 vehicles, ranging from 8 tonne trucks to 125 tonne road trains including low loaders. It has a wash bay area that services on average 8 trucks and 8 trailers daily, that produces approximately 27kL of wastewater per day. The washdown facility uses potable water from WaterCorp mains. The site doesn’t have access to mains sewers.

The challenge

Challenges this transport company experienced:

• Washdown facility generates significant volume of wastewater with a high level of impurities such as oil and sludge. The wastewater is contaminated with cleaning compounds, suspended solids and sometimes metals; thus, compliance to wastewater discharge regulation is a challenge.
• There is no connection to public sewers which could send the wastewater to a central Wastewater Treatment Plant.
• High volume/high pressure water is required to remove of contaminants. This requires a large amount of water that has to be topped up from a local municipal source or a surface/subsurface water source. Large volume tanks may also be needed to avoid several top ups from mains during of peak usage.

Our solution

Improve existing wash bay by incorporating a treatment system and recycle system.

The solution includes:

• Oil water separator
  The oil separator effectively settles out the heavy solids (which have not been removed in pre-treatment settling pits), while the bulk of the oil slugs rise immediately to the surface. The remaining oily water flows through the plates where the smaller oil droplets and fine solids are progressively separated. See more information
• Filtration system
  The package is comprised of a high-efficiency automatic backwash filter system (multi-media filter and activated carbon filter), oil adsorbing* and sediment filters, all mounted on a galvanised steel base plate. See more information

• Chlorine dosing system

Comprised of circulating pump, cartridge filter, sensor and analyser (chlorine, pH, turbidity), and chemical dosing unit (chlorine disinfection and acid neutralization). The sensor is constantly monitoring the water and when it detects chlorine concentrations below the pre-determined level it sends an instruction to the dosing unit to inject a small amount of sodium hypochlorite to restore the proper levels.

The system continuously circulates the treated water from the treated water tanks, testing and adjusting to further improve water quality. See more information

• Pressure boosting system

This consists of single or multiple pumps with pressure controller which automatically varies the speed of each pump to produce a constant, non-pulsating system pressure to accommodate changes in the system demand.

The system stores nearly 27kL of recovered water which can be re-used in the wash bay for washing operations.

* adsorbing (of a solid) hold molecules of a gas or liquid or solute as a thin film on the internal or external surface.

The outcome

At first glance, the system we installed might seem to represent an increased capital expenditure. But in the long term, the client will benefit from water savings as they don’t need frequent top-ups from the local municipal source.

Benefits

• Reduced operational expenditure
• Environmentally sound solution – provides alternative to existing water supply
• Eliminated the need to secure a permit for the discharge of wastewater.

Allied Pumps came up with an innovative way to upgrade the existing wash bay, designing, supplying, and commissioning a 4200L/hr waste-water recycling system in a sustainable way.

Water conservation is of paramount importance to us and the system we installed is both cost effective and promotes sustainability in line with that ethos. Our vision is to safeguard our community by reducing harmful impacts and providing the most sustainable solutions to meet our client’s needs.

For more information or to discuss your wastewater challenges, please contact us.