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PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES TO AID RECYCLING
Whilst what follows is just the briefest of overviews of the types of products and processes available for cleaning, treating and recycling wastewater, it should give an insight into what is possible and where it can be applied and some of the options that have recently emerged onto the market. Just to be clear however, products and systems used here as examples are not all that there are and using the UK BBC’s often quoted ‘get out clause’ when brand names are mentioned ‘other manufacturers and products are available’ you just need to look for them.
A few of excellent examples of water recycling include the process undertaken in Zurich Switzerland where drain cleaning waste is taken in and processed to extract useful by-products from the collected waste. The City’s contractor for drain cleaning uses a fleet of recycling jetting trucks for drain cleaning works across the area. Once cleaning works are completed the trucks return to a central depot where the waste tanks are emptied. On emptying, any organic material is filtered off, dried and stored for composting.
The non-organic waste is then filtered through a series of separators to remove larger material, sand-sized material and fines, with flocculent being used to recover as much solid material as possible from the water which ultimately is itself recovered for recycling during the process.
Each of the different size ranges of material are then delivered to customers and used for either concrete or cement manufacture, ensuring no solid ‘waste’ output from the plant. The water recovered from the process is then stored in a huge underground tank. This water is now clean enough to be used as ‘start-up’ water in the recycling trucks used by the contractor when they go out back into the field.
Water recycling is also being used with road sweepings as a source material. Naylor Environmental, a division of Yorkshire based Naylor Drainage Ltd, utilises its Smart Sponge® and Hydroblox® products for this purpose.
Smart Sponge® Technology offers a host of environmental, money saving uses in a variety of areas of water contamination. Smart Sponge® can remove up to 95% of
10 drain TRADER | April 2018 |
www.draintraderltd.com
all oil contaminants present in storm water run-off or similar waste water flows and can, dependent on viscosity, absorb up to five times its own weight of hydrocarbons, thereby transforming the contaminant into a solid waste with lower disposal costs. This was the potential area of relevance to the project in hand. In addition to absorbing oil, the material can also treat Pathogens as well as adsorb heavy metals.
The HydroBlox® product is 100% manufactured from end-of-life recycled thermoplastics. Naylor HydroBlox® provides a unique permanent solution for land drainage, ground stabilisation, green infrastructure and filtration that is proven to be technically superior to traditional systems. It does not clog, is easy to install and handle, requires little to no maintenance and is high strength and long lasting. In essence a recycling/cleaning facility comprises a concrete base ‘tank’ incorporating two separating walls which effectively created varying size settling tanks. Separating the various settling tanks were two porous walls that were built using the Naylor HydroBlox® product in the form of HydroBlox® planks.
The first wall allowed the water offloaded from the road sweepers to pass through with solids of 5 mm or less. Heavier solids simply settled in the holding tank under gravity before reaching the porous wall.
Flows through the first wall entered the second tank area which had a second HydroBlox® wall as its lower outlet. This wall was designed to allow flows through
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