Pre-Treatment for Dairy Production
Client
Dairy manufacturer in Victoria, Australia
Details
Value:
$2.1 Million
Project type:
Water
Plant Capacity:
7MLD
Customer Need
FILTEC was contracted to design and build a Water Treatment Plant (WTP) for a large dairy site in Victoria, Australia. The source water was a shallow surface water catchment known as channel water. The technology selected was a pressurised ultra-filtration membrane. After a few months of smooth operation, an unexpected one in one-hundred-year rain event occurred
The change in raw water quality was permanent, with high colloidal solids. As the channel water did not recover, this ultimately led to irreversible membrane fouling and blockages of some modules. The plant required a solution that would reduce the solids loading, whilst avoiding the use of any polymers that can foul a PVDF membrane.
What We Did
Understanding the cause and issue, FILTEC acted quickly to find a resolution, designing a pre-treatÂment plant to remove the additional load on the water treatment plant. A proprietary lamella clarifier with the patented Ecoflow® lamella plate was installed. This provided a very high rise-rate and compact design. It also allowed a >90 % reduction of suspended solids. This was achieved using only the existing chemicals on site and with no requirement for a flocculant aid.
The Results
The project was taken from concept to an operating pre-treatment plant in less than 12 months. In addition, there was no interruption on the existing water treatment plant. The initial water treatment plant was built to treat river water turbidity of up to 50 NTU, with the added pre-treatment process it can now handle 25 to 50 times more load than the original plant. Now the dairy production line runs smoothly with the operation of the pre-treatment plant to remove the solids loading, and the existing water treatment plant to treat high purity water for the whole dairy plant operation.
