Providing invaluable water supply to remote island community.
Challenge
Broken Hill has relied on the Menindee Lakes as the town’s main water supply since the 1960’s. The Menindee Lakes is a chain of shallow ephemeral freshwater lakes connected to the Darling River to form a storage system.
In late 2015, due to the drought conditions in the Darling system the capacity of the lake system was close to empty.
This not only limits supply of water but also impact on the quality of water which deteriorates (salinity increases) due to the high evaporation rate. Under these conditions, Broken Hill’s Water Treatment Plant, designed to remove turbidity and organic matter using conventional filtration process, requires an upgrade with the reverse osmosis process to remove the excess salinity.
Therefore the requirement for an RO plant arose, which required completion in a very short time frame - 12 weeks, very careful installation and integration with the continuously operating upstream water filtration plant, along with numerous procedures and measures to comply with from the NSW Public Works who managed the overall project on behalf of Essential Water, the owner and operator of the Broken Hill WTP.
The new RO plant was required to be integrated with the existing water treatment facility on site - successful integration would require close management of the equipment interfaces.
With a 12 week time frame, the project was completed in a very short time frame to all required standards set out by the NSW Public Works.
Challenge
With an existing Sea Water Reverse Osmosis plant that was becoming increasingly unreliable, this project was urgently needed at Ebeye to provide potable water to the island population.
Solution
Osmoflo designed, supplied and installed two new Sea Water Reverse Osmosis trains with total capacity of 1.6 MLD. Given the very remote location, Osmoflo were required to be fully self-sufficient in terms of parts and equipment to perform the works. It was determined that the plant could be located inside the existing building by modifying/removing some internal structures, therefore Osmoflo had to retrofit the prefabricated skids into place.
With help from a local contractor, Osmoflo installed all equipment and new power supplies to deliver a secure and reliable potable water supply to the island population. Osmoflo also provides ongoing operations and maintenance support. Osmoflo progressively built the capability of local KAJUR operators to continue successful operation of the plant after handover. Particularly important to this project was the high level of technical support Osmoflo were able to provide via the 24/7 operations control centre and proprietary PlantConnect software.
Result
Ebeye and KAJUR needed a quality outcome that would produce high quality potable water for the island, not only now, but well into the future. Osmoflo were able to provide a solution that suited this very unique and remote part of the world.
Along with this, Osmoflo have been involved in making a real difference to the lives of the Ebeye population through training, capacity building and reliable drinking water all while addressing the SDG6 initiative, clean water for all.
Other solutions
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