Project Details

Project Delivery

Project Results

Discussion

Situation

A wood processing company produces various sawn woods and wood panels in the east of Germany. In the process, it processes the raw material into the requested boards. Important in wood processing is a prescribed degree of moisture in the product. Therefore, the natural woods often have to pass through drying plants that extract the water from the wood. This condensate must not be discharged into the environment without treatment.

The customer wanted a self-contained treatment plant for this, which is also protected against frost. The reason for this was the location of the plant outside the production hall on the company premises. Since it can be far below 0° C in winter, the treatment plant should be able to withstand these temperatures. In addition, he wanted a system to store the wastewater data to visualise the monthly wastewater quantities.

Problem

The first challenge in this project was the fluctuating wastewater load. Although the company works in shifts, the drying plant does not run around the clock. Therefore, different amounts of wastewater accumulate every week, which the neutralisation plant must first compensate for.

The second challenge was the parameters of the wastewater. The condensate water has a pH value between 3.5 and 4 as well as a temperature between 40 and 60° C. The customer wanted a neutral pH value of between 7 and 9 and a maximum temperature of 35° C.

Solution

The solution for this project was a ClearFox® containerised wastewater treatment plant. This includes a buffer tank, a pH neutralisation unit, a heat exchanger, and a flow meter. As the wastewater is very warm, the heat exchanger can use the temperature of the wastewater to protect the plant from frost. In addition, the container walls are covered with insulation to support this effect.

The wastewater first flows through the heat exchanger, which maintains the temperature in the container or discharges it to the outside, depending on the season. Afterwards, the buffer tank collects the wastewater that accumulates. At regular intervals, the system feeds this into the neutralisation unit to adjust the pH value. The flow meter digitally collects the resulting wastewater and stores it until it is read out and stored.

The ClearFox® containerised wastewater treatment plant is the ideal solution for this project. It can be moved to another location at any time and expanded if necessary. For this project, the ClearFox® engineers went into every detail of the client. The team took over the complete planning of the project up to the installation and instruction of the employees on site.