'Quick & Able' Support Keeps Municipal Water  Supplies Running

Application Details

The water from this GWS and 7 others in the region has been filtered through filtration skids containing 10micron SupaSpun II R31's for the last 8 years, processing 44Mld (Million litres per day) without an issue. 

Over the past 6 months the incoming turbidity levels were increasing at one specific site. All the rest showed no change in quality. 

Analysis of the water particle distribution showed an increasing number of very fine particles. This shift in particle distribution of the raw water coming from the bore hole necessitated the use of finer and finer filters from 10 to 5 and finally 3 micron. 

Old Victorian Pumping Station housing Filtration Skids

Recently the distribution changed again, with a significant increase in the fine particles. This is thought to have been partially due to an increase in pumping rates required during the particularly hot and dry spell to cater for additional consumer demands. The increased turbidity caused repeated automatic shut downs of the GWS as the turbidity limits were being exceeded downstream of the filters.

Proactive Support (Quick & Able)

'Quick and Able' is all about having the expertise to identify and solve a problem while having the flexibility in manufacturing and logistics to implement the solution quickly. 

Analysis of the water highlighted the need for 1 micron rated filters to ensure the turbidity requirements where met. The graph below also indicates the impact of water flow on the number of particles both upstream and downstream of the filter with an approximate 10% increase in flow producing a 20% increase in the number of fine particles.

Supplied and Installed in a day

The customer was a little reticent in moving forward with the installation of high efficiency 1 micron filters due to concerns over short lifetime to blockage and consequent potential increase in OPEX. 

When turbidity levels rose to a point where supply to the network had to be curtailed once again, there was no option but to install the 1 micron filters.

We received an order in the morning and the filters arrived onsite and were installed 8.00pm the same day. Normal service resumed.

Turbidity restored to <0.03NTU 

Immediately following installation the turbidity was down to 0.01NTU with a negligible impact on differential pressure or lifetime to date. The graph below illustrated the drop in turbidity reading following the installation of the 1 micron filters. 

Conclusion

When problems occur its important that you can rely on your filter supplier to deliver not just the product but the technical solutions as well. 

The advanced design and manufacture of our SupaSpun II R31 depth filters confers an optimised combination of guaranteed filtrate quality along with unrivalled on-stream life from the unique graded density structure.

Some key takeaways to think about: 

• Raw water quality can change over time, but also by the day. Its always important to have the flexibility to adapt your filtration solution
• Ensure your filter supplier can support you quickly in an emergency, both technically and logistically
• The use of lower micron rating / higher efficiency filters doesn't need to have a significant impact on lifetime if they are designed well.   

And Finally...what the customer says

’ The hottest June on record saw higher than normal customer water demand throughout the region.  All water treatment works were required to increase volumes to ensure customer supplies were maintained.  On one groundwater site the raw turbidity had deteriorated from its normal turbidity performance of 0.5ntu to turbidity of above 5ntu.  The change in turbidity loading and particle size meant turbidity was breaking through the 3 micron filters in situ, post turbidity increased from 0.03ntu to 0.5ntu and the site had to be shutdown resulting in a loss of deployable output of up to 4Mld.  On the morning of the issue Amazon were contacted and were able to advise on a solution that would improve the post filtered quality which would support a quick site restart.  It was agreed to change the filters to a 1 micron cartridge based on the changing raw water quality.  As there was an urgent need Amazon were able to transport the new cartridges in the same day where the delivery driver met with the operational team on site out of hours where the new cartridges were immediately installed.  The fast turnaround and solution provided meant the site was restarted later that same day.  The post turbidity returned to 0.03ntu and the site’s output was returned to normal volumes – 2-weeks on the site is still performing with a headloss of 3m pressure’