Borehole Water Treatment for a Food Processing Plant

Introduction

This particular customer on the East Coast of England whose primary business is Cold Storage and Distribution also specialize in seasonal garden pea production for approximately 8 weeks every year.

We were primarily brought in to conduct works on the borehole water that was being used in the processing plant. This was being dosed with Chlorine Dioxide to conform with the site’s quality procedures and client specifications

The Challenge

The first challenge that we faced was the current dosing system that was being used for the borehole water comprised of two dosing pumps, both of which were on timers with no system control. This regularly resulted in either overdosing or under dosing of Chlorine Dioxide into the water that supplied the production facility. resulting in, production downtime and potential product waste and spoilage.

We also discovered there were no safety aspects within the previous installation regarding the generation of Chlorine Dioxide which needed to be addressed. Chlorine Dioxide generation and mixing of chemicals poses many inherent risks and safety features to monitor and control the release of Chlorine Dioxide Gas are paramount to maintain safety for all employees and site visitors.

The Solution

Our Hydro-Safe Chlorine Dioxide Generation System was installed to provide peace of mind that the system was constantly dosed with Chlorine Dioxide to always meet with the Quality Assurance PPM levels of the Client during production. This was maintained at 0.4 – 0.6ppm with quality checks carried out daily.

Additional to this the Hydro-Safe and all its safety features provided peace of mind to the client that the generation of Chlorine Dioxide was done the safest way possible.

The Hydro-Safe Safety Features include:

1. The Generator is self-contained and is fitted with a Gas sensor, which will activate and shut the unit down.
2. Chlorine dioxide is produced with a batch process. The reaction process takes place at atmospheric pressure. An active carbon filter prevents potential exhalations.
3. The Generator is designed so that the reaction to produce chlorine dioxide takes place in a reaction chamber. A multifunction valve guarantees the safety of the process
4. Alarms: products – water – emptying
5. Double chamber: reaction and storage
6. 3 metering pumps: red HCl pump – blue NaCLO2 pump – grey ClO2 pump, to eliminate any cross contamination when service is carried out.
7. Chemical is delivered via our ‘Hands free’ pump over system, to reduce Health & Safety in handling Chemicals in smaller 25kg drums and the waste/cost associated with Drum disposal.

Value added

With the installation of our Hydro Safe system, this uses a digital dosing technology which achieves straight line dosing rather than the peaks and troughs of outdated proportional dosing Chlorine Dioxide technologies. Not only does this give our customer peace of mind that over and under dosing is being prevented, it also resulted in 66% less chemical usage than the previous year. This was due to the superior generation and conversion of Chlorine Dioxide.

The Hydro Safe system is also able to generate greater than 98.8% stability, which means that consent limits for chlorite and chlorate are not compromised. This had led to less down time and product spoilage which was previously an issue with the levels of Chlorine Dioxide either being too high or too low.