28 Feature

Filtration+Separation January/February 2014

Process water
A new trend in
mobile water
treatment plant hire
lant breakdowns can be solved by hiring a mobile water treatment
P facility. However, with a mains water supply it is not always as simple
as that. The change of water supply from river to borehole, or vice
versa, on an industrial water treatment plant can be devastating. One
solution, writes Mark Dyson of Aquamove, is a mobile fleet including
a range of pre-treatment processes.

When Aquamove established its mobile
water treatment plant facility in the United
Kingdom, it was aimed at providing temporary
solutions for plant breakdowns, planned
maintenance and commissioning. It was
ultimately for temporary requirements, and
that is still the main application, but over
recent years a new trend has been developing:
long-term plant rentals.
Initially the mobile fleet was equipped
with just reverse osmosis and ion exchange
demineralisation to cover mechanical
breakdown of on-site systems, and these
are still the two most widely used packages.
Deionisation trailers typically provide
two streams of cation, anion and mixed
bed ion exchange which are capable of
producing 100 m3/h of 0.1 S/cm high purity
water.
When the ion exchange resins are
exhausted, the complete trailer is returned
to the central regeneration facility,
which means zero discharge on-site and
no problems of handling or disposal of
regenerant chemicals. Since the plant
footprint is bigger than ion exchange,
containerised reverse osmosis units are
generally capable of producing up to 25
m3/h of permeate of conductivity typically
less than 2 0S/cm in a single pass. If higher
quality treated water is needed, two units can
be configured in series as twin pass giving
permeate of less than 5 S/cm.
No standby capacity
Financial constraints often mean that there
is no standby capacity in the on-site water
treatment plant, so when a vessel internal fails,
or theres a fire in the plant room, production
is at risk. When an emergency like this does
occur the simplest solution is to hire a trailer
mounted mobile water treatment system while
repairs are carried out. But the introduction
of common carriage and extended water
supply networks has brought a different kind
of problem. Mains water, unlike gas, oil and
electricity, is not always the same: seasonal algal
growth on a reservoir can increase the organic
content causing rapid fouling of ion exchange
resins and reverse osmosis membranes.
Another possibility is that the water supplier
may have to change the source of the water
supply from river to borehole or vice versa,
with a sudden and dramatic change in total
dissolved solids. The water still meets the
requirements for drinking water but the effect
on an industrial water treatment plant can
be devastating: Ion exchange plants designed
for thin, upland waters may have insufficient
capacity to treat thicker borehole waters
whilst those designed for hard, borehole
waters may suffer from fouling by higher
concentrations of natural organic matter in
supplies derived from moorland reservoirs.
To meet this demand, the mobile fleet
was expanded to include a range of pre-
treatment processes including coagulation
and flocculation, clarification, filtration,
activated carbon adsorption and softening, all
in modular configurations to provide the right
process route to treat any raw water quality to
achieve any treated water quality and quantity
required.
Expanding production
While many of the applications for mobile
units are emergencies, not all of them
are about the nasty things in life. An
unexpectedly full order book often creates an
urgent need to expand production quickly,
and a mobile plant can provide the additional
treated water you need while youre waiting
for a permanent plant to be installed.
Sometimes companies need to carry out
production trials, and may want to look at the
effects of water quality on their production
processes.
Temporary deionisation plants provide a
cost-effective means of finding out if it
is worthwhile making substantial capital
investment in a permanent plant. And, of
course, many mobile customers hire temporary
plants to provide treated water during
planned maintenance shutdowns of the water
treatment plant and similar non-emergency
situations. Over the last year the service has
provided, among many others, a filtration and
reverse osmosis plant to treat an unexpectedly
large volume of landfill leachate resulting

Filtration+Separation January/February 2014
All the equipment is installed in a standard 40 ft trailer which is insulated and supplied with heating and lighting so that, inside the container, the environment resembles most
plant rooms.
from high rainfall; a reverse osmosis system
to upgrade a poorly performing river water
treatment plant; and a reverse osmosis and
deionisation plant to feed a power and steam
utilities plant at a major chemical complex
during a planned outage.
But, perhaps surprisingly, an increasing
number of customers are making a case
for long-term hire. This may be because
the capital investment in a permanent
plant would not pay back within the life
of the project a nuclear power station
decommissioning project and a limited
life power station refurbishment were real
examples where this approach proved to be
cost-effective.
The temporary plant approach also provides
other advantages. The quality of the treated
water is guaranteed and the treatment process
is tailored to meet current water quality needs,
whether that is for dealkalised water for soft
drinks manufacturing, purified water for
pharmaceuticals, demineralised water for high
pressure boilers or even ultrapure water for
semiconductor manufacturing. If the treated
water quality needs to be upgraded, it is an
easy matter to change the trailer for one using
a more advanced treatment process.
Long-term rental of mobile water
treatment solutions means the
plant is available immediately, and
has no associated capital cost
Waste plant example
Energy from one waste plant incinerates
225,000 tonnes per year of non-recyclable
domestic waste to produce 400C superheated
steam in a 46 bar water tube boiler. This steam
drives a turbine which generates electricity for
export to the National Grid. Make-up water
for the boiler is produced in an on-site ion
exchange demineralisation plant consisting
Feature 29
of a cation exchanger, anion exchanger and
mixed bed polishing but this was failing to
meet the 20g/l silica water quality required.
The initial solution was to provide three
mobile temporary mixed bed polishers to
polish the water from the demineralisation
plant mixed beds and reduce the silica to
less than 10g/l. Continuous treated water
quality monitoring for conductivity and silica
was also provided. The ionic load on to the
mobile units is very low and exhaustion is
infrequent. They are not regenerated on
site but returned to the central regeneration
station in exchange for a regenerated unit.
The temporary solution proved so reliable
and cost-effective that it is still in use more
than twelve months later.
Long-term rental of mobile water treatment
solutions means that the plant is available
immediately, has no associated capital
cost and does not require any housing: the
equipment is all installed in a standard 40ft
trailer which is insulated and supplied with
30 Feature
The trailers are kitted out with the appropriate safety equipment and are complete with all necessary instrumentation and controls.
heating and lighting so that, inside the
container, the environment is just like most
plant rooms. The trailers are also maintained
with the appropriate safety equipment and
complete with all necessary instrumentation
and controls. They can be positioned to make
the best use of available space and connected
to existing pipework using flexible hoses.
In terms of process technology, the range is
almost unlimited. Mobile units are completely
modular, so any configuration of processes can
be combined to make up a complete system
to suit any application, which means that
borehole, river and reservoir waters can be
handled as easily as mains waters.
A typical temporary or mobile plant might
consist of pre-treatment by multi-media
filtration, organic scavenging or granular
activated carbon adsorption in pre-treatment
trailers; reverse osmosis in a second trailer
and even mixed bed ion exchange polishing
in a third. Temporary tanks and pumps can
also be provided in trailers together with all
interconnecting flexible hoses, water meters
and fittings, and, of course, mobile generators
to make the system completely stand-alone.
Latest addition
The latest addition to the range is Remox,
a membrane degassing process which
removes carbon dioxide and oxygen from
water. Dissolved carbon dioxide reduces the
efficiency of ion exchange and continuous
electrodeionisation processes. Membrane
degassing works by passing the water across a
gas-permeable membrane, on the other side
of which is a flow of atmospheric air. Carbon
dioxide transfers across the membrane from
the gas rich water to the carbon dioxide lean
inert gas. The process reduces dissolved carbon
dioxide to less than 0.3 mg/l. Replacing the
air with an inert gas either nitrogen or water
vapour generated under vacuum allows
dissolved oxygen to be removed.
Oxygen causes corrosion in boiler systems so
it has to be removed from boiler feed water
by adding oxygen scavenging chemicals like
sulphite or carbohydrazide. Remox removes
dissolved oxygen to less than 0.01 mg/l,
dramatically reducing the consumption of
oxygen scavengers. Dissolved oxygen in semi-
conductor rinse water can result in wafer
surface defects and, in food and beverage
Filtration+Separation January/February 2014
products; it can impair shelf life and taste.
Remox is the first membrane degasser to be
available on the rental market and can treat
up to 100 m3/h of water. The degassing system
is fully automatic with on-line monitoring for
complete operational security and is complete
with all necessary compressed air, nitrogen and
vacuum equipment.
Operational problems with mobile plants are
rare, there are hardly any chemical additions
and no chemical handling and disposal issues,
and regular maintenance service visits are
included in the hire contract. This means
that total operational costs can be forecast
with a high level of certainty, and with no
requirement for capital investment. If the
raw water quality changes, the mobile plant
can easily be reconfigured. No wonder that
more temporary solutions are becoming
permanent.
Contact:
ELGA Process Water,
Marlow International, Parkway,
Marlow, Bucks SL7 1YL UK.
Tel: + 44 (0) 1628 897000
sales.uk@veoliawater.com
www.elgaprocesswater.co.uk