HyDAF System to allow Water Reuse for Cloncurry Shire Council
HyDAF was incorporated into the Cloncurry Shire Council sewage treatment plant upgrade, by BMD Constructions in 2021, to provide a robust tertiary treatment solution that will ensure plant compliance with new discharge licences and enable effluent to be used for irrigation purposes.
The existing effluent media filtration treatment process was struggling to handle the high concentration and variation in algae present in the lagoon effluent. Cloncurry like many remote regional Councils in Australia employ a simple lagoon-based sewage treatment process as space is plentiful and such systems have minimal power and operational requirements.
However, one of the common problems with these systems is that algae can thrive in the shallow, slow moving, nutrient rich water, especially in the summer months. Although the algae provide a critical role in treatment, they also add solids, organics and nutrients to the effluent which risks breach of the licence limits.
The existing media filtration system proved to be difficult to operate and would provide varying performance due to the seasonal variations is algae concentration and cell morphology that are experienced.
The HyDAF process has been selected as pre-treatment of the effluent prior to media filtration to ensure suitable consistent quality effluent for discharge to the environment or land irrigation.
Selection of the HyDAF process is based on its proven track record in the treatment of effluent with high algal loads. The HyDAF process is robust and has a low level of operational complexity.
The dissolved air flotation (DAF) plant removes suspended solids from the feed water by floating and concentrating them at the surface in a sludge blanket. The sludge can then be simply scraped off to remove the solids from the water.
The Hydroflux HyDAF Dissolved Air Flotation system’s simplicity and exceptional performance is a perfect fit for Cloncurry Council’s new tertiary treatment facility and will allow council to meet its water reuse targets and reduce reliance on potable water.
HyDAF Specification
| Details | HyDAF – 22 L/s |
| Model | HD75 |
| Recycle system | 1 x 4kW |
| Recycle flow | 13.9 kL/hr |
| Surface loading rate | 6.5 |
HyDAF Design Water Quality
| Parameter | Units | Average | High |
| Flow | L/s | 20 | 22 |
| TSS | mg/L | 69 | 85 |
| Temperature | Deg C | 20* | 25* |
The final effluent was under 5NTU for high loadings and less than 3NTU in average loadings.
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