A long-term Aid project managed throughout the pandemic.
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 travel restrictions in place due to the ongoing pandemic, the team at Osmoflo were faced with delivering a bespoke water plant in a challenging environment, and continuing to succesfully deliver ongoing operations and maintenance. Bespoke Water Plant in Challenging EnvironmentInvaluable Water Supply to Remote CommunityEducating Local Operators to work on the PlantReliability and Performance imperative for the futureState of the art communication and monitoring critical for capturing tasks before issues arrive
Solution
Beyond just delivering an invaluable water supply to the remote community, Osmoflo’s focus was delivering a sustainable water future. Osmoflo’s International operations team worked side-by-side with local operators throughout the pandemic to educate local operators to work on the plant. Reliability and performance were imperative for the future so the team utilized state of the art communication, from live streaming video chat to plant condition audits, to ensure maintenance tasks are captured before they become a problem.
Result
Over the past five years of fluid operations in the Marshall Islands, the SWRO potable water plant is a testament to our ability to not only deliver bespoke water plants in challenging environments but also ensure their reliability and performance is in line with the design life. Through the education of local operators, who continue to work on the plant, Osmoflo has delivered an invaluable water supply for the remote community that can be accessed by generations to come.
Other solutions
