INFORMATION ON COMMERCIAL WATER PURIFICATION

[helloworld1000]

Hello,

So for my work I design plumbing systems. We have a school on septics which were installed many years ago. The installation is old and the amount of students at the school has increased.
A geo-technical report has concluded that the school site is no longer suitable for septics - due to the size of the school and changes to code since the original installation.
The closest sewer manhole is 2.2km away, and the cost of pumping the sewer via a pumping station is approximately 2 million.

I have been able to locate a company which can process the sewer onsite, using a more modern process, but it will still require some waste water to be filtered into a grass mound. The plant which has been proposed to us, will convert the sewer waste after several stages into, "Class A Irrigation Water". I was surprised at the price by the company proposing this to us, and would like to investigate further the possibility of distilling the Class A irrigation water, and then disposing of it directly into a stormwater drain. The local council & EPA (Environmental protection agency) surely could have no objection to distilled water being discharged direct to stormwater.

I am due to finalize my feasibility study/recommendations to the school mid this coming week, so this is something I can focus on and spend some time on during work hours. My question is - can someone please recommend a commercial plant which could process this water by distillation?

The school produces 5900 liters of waste water per day. The system we are currently proposing which will convert this into Class A irrigation Water, will be designed to handle approximately 8000 liters/day.
We calculate this to be produced during an 8 hour period, and so this translates to a system which can distill approximately 16.5 litres of water per minute for 8 hours; or 990 liters per hour. Alternatively we could control the flow of water to be distilled to be as little as 5.5 litres per hour - if the machine ran non stop.

I'm aware that we should be able to dispose of Class A irrigation water direct down the stormwater drain anyway, however for absolute peace of mind for the school, and for our company who will be signing off on the installation, the idea that the waste water is distilled prior to disposal I think is the ultimate solution.

We would want a device (or a couple of devices in tandem), that can be set to run automatically within a purpose built shed, with virtually no human operating other than regular maintenance by groundsmen with minimal training. All the primary septics systems and pumping station operate fully automatically with no human operators. Is there a system or a company who could handle this sort of thing? There are larger companies that deal in this level of water purification, but they all require that the system is treating a minimum of 20,000 liters/day - hence most sewerage treatment plants aren't suitable for this. I'm just trying to see if there is a company which sells or specializes in commercial distilling of water, to the tune of approx 8000 liters / day?

Thanks for your time - apologies if I'm not really on the right forum.

[Doubleuj]

Hi mate, not really our cup of tea here distilling water but Andrew at 5 star might be able to sell you something that will work.

[Sam.]

Distilling water to run to waste is never going to be cost effective. Also you are always left with what is in the still and would need to dispose of that.

Also what country is this "school"?

How about an aerobic treatment system like biocyle or ri-treat, or an evaporation pond?

Or perhaps a waste water engineer would be more suitable than a hobby distilling forum where the member like to make nice drinks and have a good time...

[wynnum1]

Where are you as some of these on-site systems can have expensive yearly costs like inspections and yearly fees .Some countries collect urine and reprocess as a resource so may be worth looking at plus there is a thing called water mining where sewerage water is reused.
A fertiliser works wanted to get sewerage water years ago but the local government wanted to charge nearly the cost of fresh water and i think they built their own desal plant instead .

[helloworld1000]

Hi,

The school is located in Victoria, we already have a system proposal from True Water Australia https://truewateraustralia.com/commercial-sewage/ . Ordinary Septics and leach drains convert the waste via anaerobic an aerobic bacteria break down. The system proposed by True Water Australia will break it down further and they say (after reading the geotech report) the waste water can then be disposed of within the existing site. This can be done for about 25% of the cost of connecting the site via pressure rising main to the nearest sewer manhole which is 2.2km away.

Yes I understand this system will cost money to run, but for the amount saved from not having to install a rising main, they could probably install a small shed to house all this equipment and put solar panels on the roof to pay for the cost of running the thing. The proposal from True Water Australia https://truewateraustralia.com/km-sg-np/ or https://truewateraustralia.com/k-hc-r/ still requires a small section of grassed area to put the water back into the ground. Because its a primary school with kids around - we have to put our company name to it, so I'd feel a lot more comfortable about converting the water further by distillation and dumping it direct to the irrigation channel at the front of the property.

So, I'm chasing a commercial distillery that can take the water direct from the sewerage tank underground, and distill it. This is for 2 reasons, [1] because its a primary school and kids will be running around on this grassed area, and [2], to get the local council to approve our concept, if we tell them the waste water is literally distilled prior to dumping down the stormwater drain, it would meet the highest possible quality standards guaranteed. I don't want to design something and get the clients hopes up that they can save spending 2 million on a rising main, only to have our proposal rejected by a council.

If the school produces 5900 liters a day between 8am and 4pm, that waste water can gradually fill a storage tank, and the distiller can run 24hours a day processing only 5.5 liters an hour.

I was hoping one of you guys in this industry would know someone to refer me to, as I know this is a alcohol distillers forum. We want a system that will run on its own basically. Doesn't matter if its expensive as it will be cheaper than running this rising main 2.2km away. The equipment could cost 2-300K and the entire plant would still be less than half the price of the rising main

[The Stig]

Time for this to be put to bed.
We don’t condone continuous stills let alone unmonitored stills.