All Purpose Pumps was recently approached to audit and consider the requirements of refurbishing a reverse osmosis membrane application to be utilised in an industrial application in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

APP visited the site and learnt that the plant had been purchased from a site in Sydney designed for Sydney mains and was later relocated to Melbourne. Since water mains in Sydney are different to Melbourne water mains, this plant was not suitable and as a result, it didn’t perform correctly. The plant had a poor history of failing to meet the site requirements as permeate flow was inconsistent, membrane performance was poor, overall process balancing was not efficient, membrane cleaning was non-existent which had left the customer on the verge of scrapping the plant altogether.

All aspects were audited by APP:

• Feed water systems
• Pre-treatment
• Antiscalant
• Control system and PLC
• Instrumentation
• Hydraulic balancing and performance optimisation
• Clean in Place (CIP)
• Operations and Maintenance

After generating a plan and proposal to suit the application and the customer’s production schedule, APP began works on site. The works carried out restored performance in maximising recovery and rejection whilst maintaining consistent operational performance. The CIP regime was modified to obtain maximum possible membrane recovery post cleaning and the control system was interrogated and adjusted with careful attention to fine tuning. The antiscalant system was modified and fine tuned to suit Melbourne Mains.

There are still some further works to be undertaken on the pre-treatment.