REVERSE OSMOSIS WATER INSTALLATION

We were approached by an existing customer last month regarding the installation of a small Water Reverse Osmosis plant to use in their facility in the Midlands.They are trialing some new production equipment which requires a feed of high quality clean water to use during a special wet weaving process. The new equipment has a water consumption of up to 750 liters per hour and a steady maintained pressure of 3.0 Bar was specified to us. The Reverse Osmosis unit was supplied by Culligan UK, together with the water softener equipment. Mains water is fed through a Culligan water softener which is controlled by an integral digital control unit and separate brine tank. The site water is gently softened to a preset value before being fed to the RO plant. Next in line we had to install a wall mounted 1 micron carbon filter which removes impurities from the system before being fed into the Reverse Osmosis plant. Connections to the RO plant were fairly straightforward, we were instructed to use plastic pipe for all the connections on the plant and we therefore used an ABS system with specialist solvent cement. Plastic pipe when cleaned will transfer no contaminants back into the RO water which could happen with metal and copper pipe. All valves and unions were of ABS construction. The RO plant has an inbuilt computer control station which operates the system and records volume of water etc to advise when the membranes require changing. A pump on the plant forces water through three different grades of membrane and then finally discharges the clean RO water into a 1000 litre holding tank. A simple float switch mounted to the lid of the tank calls the RO system to operate when the tank starts to run low and maintains a level of stored RO water. Some of the impure backwash water is fed back into the supply water to be re-processed again and the remainder of the impure backwash water is fed direct to drain. We installed a water meter on the drainage to the production area so that waste water costs are controlled. The material when manufactured remains wet so not all of the used water is discharged to drain. Output from the RO system was fed to a 1000 litre holding tank supplied with lid mounted to the raised gantry supplied by site. We installed a new water supply to the area using a 32mm fusion MDPE pipe system. The source was connected directly to one of the sites incoming water manifolds and we installed 300M of pipe in total to reach the new production area. We calculated flow rates and the 32mm pipe is capable of the required demand. As the pipework entered the new production area, we converted to galvanised steel and installed an additional check valve (as well as a double check valve at source) to remove any possibility of polluting the suppliers water pipeline. We also added a service wheel valve to isolate the water supply when required and made our connections via a union to make separation easier in the future if needed. Plastic pipe was used for the remainder of the installation. From the holding tank we piped up a DAB E.Sybox single inverter pump and programmed the pump to maintain a steady 3 Bar discharge pressure. Pipework from the pump was then fed to the customers trial equipment and terminated to a plastic hose connection. The DAB E.Sybox pumps are extremely energy efficient and perform well for this type of application. Culligan UK attended site and provided a commissioning engineer to program the water softener and the Reverse Osmosis machine. As we had installed the plant correctly commissioning took only just over an hour and we left site with the equipment fully working. The site should have their new equipment operational in a few weeks and we look forward to visiting site and visually seeing the kit working. PW Maintenance can assist with the supply and installation of a wide variety of process plant and equipment, together with Reverse Osmosis and Water Softening equipment. Please email us or call us on 0845 557 8085 to discuss any forthcoming projects.

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