A water purification plant upgrade project has recently been completed by Water Purification Chemicals & Plant (WPCP) who acted as mechanical and electrical contractors for Umgeni Water.
“Due to the expansion of the population in the greater Ixopo area in Kwazulu-Natal, the local water purification plant had been experiencing serious water shortages,” explains Martin Overy, WPCP’s managing director. “Out-dated filtration equipment aggravated this problem and the urgency of the situation required that the upgrade be completed in a tight three month period. “The challenges of this contract, which entailed the refurbishment of the filtration capacity of the Ixopo Water Purification Works, included a contract to strip the existing non-functional pressure sand filters and replace these with new coated steel sand filters.” WPCP, with the assistance of the Umgeni Water plant personnel at Ixopo, process technicians and design engineers at Umgeni Water PEF, ensured the contact deadline was met – with only half a day’s downtime.The upgraded plant, with three new pressure filters, now has a filter capacity of 2 Ml/d. According to stringent Umgeni Water specifications, the water quantity is 90 m³/hr and the quality is less than, or equal to, 0.2 NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Unit – which is the measure of the clarity of a liquid).
The new filtration plant is enhanced by dedicated backwash and backwash recovery pumps, air blowers, piping and valves, as well as a full set of instrumentation. The plant, which needed to become fully computerised, required automation of the entire pressure filter system, including the design, programming, installation and commissioning of a new motor Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Human Machine Interface (HMI) data visualisation solutions. This also included valve actuation, pump automation, cabling and the compilation of a functional design specification for the system. This equipment was supplied by Electron Natal. All process design was undertaken by Umgeni Water’s process evaluation facility (PEF).
