When an a regional water compay needed to add a new ferric sulphate dosing plant at the Cliff Quay Sewage Treatment Works in Ipswich, they knew M&C Engineering had the tools, the training and the tech for the job.

What was the brief?

Waste water requires a number of treatments to remove unwanted elements before it can be flushed back into circulation. One such element is phosphate, which can be removed by dosing with ferric sulphate.

Making the job slightly more complex, we needed to build the plant to be fully mobile, allowing it to be moved to other similar sites. Cliff Quay also has an unusual flow split, so a unique mechanism needed to be designed to spread the dosing across the entire incoming, pre-treatment flow.

How did you go about it?

With the aim of reducing man hours, the new plant measures the incoming flow, then doses at a predetermined rate, set proportionally to the inlet flow. This is controlled by a programmable logic controller (PLC) which has a full colour HMI operating panel for display and control purposes.

The new plant is made up of one 30,000 litre storage tank, two inverter driven pumps, a PLC and HMI. The fully bunded 130m pipe – from pumps to dosing point – has no joins and treats accurately a crude inlet flow rate of 75-1100 litres a second.

We also designed a unique new v-notch delivery distribution bar, allowing the correct spread across the incoming flow.

As with the plant we installed in Clacton, earlier this year, this one is a fully portable, self-contained unit, including local lighting, an emergency shower, wash down and delivery point.

What was the timeframe for this project?

From briefing to commission, this project took the teams at M&C eight weeks to complete – delivered on time and on budget.