Drought conditions with the resulting stringent restrictions on water use, make it increasingly difficult to maintain landscaping to a presentable and sustainable level. As landscaping can represent a significant financial investment, there are very real benefits to utilising recycled wastewater in irrigation networks. The EPCO Australia Packaged Extended Aeration Sewage Treatment Plant (PSTP) was developed in Australia in 1962 to meet the demands of smaller or isolated communities for the purification of domestic sewage to a degree allowing discharge to local water courses or soakage trenches. Adding technological refinements and slightly modifying the process has brought the original package plant concept to the stage of being able to consistently produce A & A+ qualities of treated effluent suitable for reuse requirements such as landscape irrigation, toilet flushing, car washing and the like.

Port Hinchinbrook Marina & Resort - Reclaimed water from the plant is to be used to irrigate a grove of mango trees

The additions and improvements have made packaged plants ideal for providing adequate water supplies during the total sprinkler ban currently imposed throughout South East Queensland.

The operation of the system is simple - the incoming raw sewage is screened and mixed with returned activated sludge from the settling chamber. This mixture drops into the aeration chamber, where interaction with oxygen produces activated sludge bacteria that consume the pollutants in the sewage stream. This stage of treatment takes approximately 24 hours.

The aerated sludge, now called Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids (MLSS), moves on to the settling chamber via a flow regulating device, where clarification takes place. The settled sludge is returned to the inlet end of the plant to continue the treatment process. The surface scum collected by the scum skimming mechanism is also returned to the inlet end of the plant.

The clarified effluent flows on to disinfection and tertiary processes as needed, to achieve the final discharge quality set by the local statutory authorities.

Packaged plants can be designed to suit 50 persons to 5000 persons and can be located in ground or above. They have a number of advantages in that they are compact, very reliable and are simple to operate and maintain. The EPCO Australia PSTP can produce effluents ranging in quality from the basic 20mg/l BOD, 30mg/l Suspended Solids ('D' Class effluent - Queensland Water Recycling Guidelines 2005 ), to the polished effluents having bacterial counts of less than 10 coli forming units (cfu) and turbidity levels of less than 2 NTU (A & A+ Class - Queensland Water Recycling Guidelines 2005) . Such high quality effluents are suitable for specific reuse purposes.

 

 

 

Concrete tank for sewage plant at the Gulf Hotel Muscat Oman – 220m3/day

 

Welded plant Lizard Island Resort- Tropical North Queensland

• Trailer mounting for small sizes
• Concrete Tank
• Tertiary Filters
• Comminutors or mechanical screening
• Tablet Chlorine Disinfection
• UV Disinfection
• Flow Balance Tanks
• Plant Operation & NATA testing

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