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particles, hair, and fibre that clog membranes must be removed prior to the MBR stage. South East Asian applications of MBR technology include municipal, manufacturing, mining, primary production and industrial users together with textiles, paper, packaging, and wherever recycled water systems are in place. With the expansion of such applications post-COVID-19 and the major and expanding pressure on South East Asia’s water resources, no municipal or industrial applications can afford untreated wastewater outflows to continue or for treatment systems including MBRs to be susceptible to blockages and spills resulting from the vagaries of flows and pollutant content resulting from drought, flood and increasingly unpredictable input. According to Bambridge, screening efficiencies can be delivered down to 250 microns, as seen in current CST projects. This can curtail the impact of many nanoparticles such as plastics passing into groundwater, the environment and food chains. He also said that each installation is different — there is no one size fits all. “The stretching of supply chains during the COVID-19 demonstrated the folly of buying standardised solutions imported from the other
side of the world, because they were the cheapest up front,” he said. “This was false economy, which transferred costs, problems and penalties down the timeline. If cheap systems malfunctioned, support and parts were a long time in coming to solve problems that needed immediate action to avoid spills, cleanups, and statutory penalties.” THE FRONT LINE OF WASTEWATER SYSTEM PROTECTION Efficient and easily maintained screening is the first critical stage in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, as water industry plant operators appreciate. Wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operators are the people who have to ensure that screens and compactors operate to their design and remove floating, neutral buoyancy, and non-biodegradable solids that would otherwise flow through a WWTP, potentially causing equipment damage and blockages. Pumps and dewatering systems are engineered to handle some impurities and variations, but, beyond a certain level, debris and irregular feeds can lead to equipment failures and faster component wear. This can be safeguarded against by headworks such as fine mechanical screens, screening compactors, grit removal
systems and grit washing systems, according to Bambridge.
1 MBRs can offer advantages with fine pre-screening 2 CST wastewater stainless steel screen drum compactor can withstand
“Tailored headworks protect the multiple systems we install downstream in the water quality process, optimising the efficiency of aerobic, anaerobic, green energy and recycling plants which can deliver water qualities with chemical oxygen demand (COD) nutrient removal levels up to 98% and 99%,” he said. “The water we are processing — which can be industrial waste or meat plants, for example — goes back into the environment at a much higher quality than the process water that was drawn out of the environment in the first place. For municipal systems, the quality of recycled water produced is of top international standard and suitable for human consumption.” “Flexibility in operation is also key to ongoing efficiency in handling diverse inputs and flows, regardless of the location and input. Headworks that are efficient over diverse conditions — that do not fail under high load or flow — are vital to all the downstream purification and recycling process stages in a properly engineered WWTP,” he added. “Unless solids are efficiently separated out from wastewater at the start of the purification process, proven; high performance; and robust screens
shock loads and larger solids that screens using
lighter mesh construction 3 Functional layout of CST in-channel
rotary drum technology
Water & Wastewater Asia | September-October 2024 47
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