NPE was asked to provide a screening solution that would allow the local council to take their entire inlet works offline for an extended period to facilitate the strip out, re-coating and refurbishment of their inlet works at the Byron Bay sewage treatment plant.
The solution required needed the sewage treatment plant to be operational 24/7 and the bioreactor and treatment processes to be maintained without risking further damage to the facility or its systems, this work was declared essential and critical.
NPE designed, fabricated and installed a screening and bypass solution that could cater for complete redundancy and allow for the inlet works to be taken offline indefinitely whilst the urgent works were completed.
The inlet works on-site were fed by 4 individual rising mains that delivered the entire town of Byron Bay’s wastewater supply to the plant for treatment. It was imperative that the solution proposed by NPE had built-in redundancy and provided a level of screening that would allow the plant to continue under normal operations whilst the inlet works were offline. Wet weather contingency was another major consideration within the design of NPE’s temporary screening system. We needed to ensure that not only was the system capable of managing the peak incoming flows to the plant with redundancy but that it could also manage prolonged spikes from wet weather flows on the back of localised storms and periods of heavy rain.
In addition to the 4 incoming rising mains, NPE’s system was also required to cater for an additional 3 supply feeds to the plant, including the filtrate return line for the sites belt press and a vacuum truck disposal point that catered for all of the septic systems and pit pump-outs within the local area.
NPE’s system allowed for a primary and secondary screening process for grits and rags and was able to screen the incoming wastewater down to 6mm. The screened effluent was then pumped directly to the bioreactor on-site to continue the treatment process within the plant.
In total, NPE processed and screened over 250 megalitres of wastewater through our system, all screened to 6mm and sent back through the site’s bioreactor whilst the inlet works were taken offline.
The design screened flow capacity for the system was 340 litres per second.
NPE has designed a modular system that can be rapidly deployed with additional units for larger treatment plants with higher flow requirements.
The project was completed on time, on budget and with zero incident incidents from NPE.
