Not even the mighty Mississippi River can stop Industrial Water’s latest innovation. “This is the most powerful UF unit in our fleet,” said Industrial Water Engineering Manager Neil Dewitt. IW is placing the finishing touches on a heavier duty High Solids UF (Ultrafiltration) unit, which is set to place MPW way ahead of the UF curve. “It’s a fantastic technology,” he said.
Among several competitive advantages, the new High Solids UF unit is completely self-contained, meaning all necessary tanks and pumps are on board. It’s also not dependent upon the customer to provide a gravity drain. “Current UF systems need to dump into a drain via gravity,” Dewitt said. “But this unit can operate without a waste tank pumping system and does not require infrastructure to raise the units for gravity draining.”
“This unit can be marketed with a pressurized waste system without needing a separate waste tank skid. This allows us to send waste directly into customer plumbing or customer holding tanks,” said Mechanical Systems Engineer Baylee Walcott, who devoted six months to designing the system.
The unit’s other competitive advantage is that it’ll never meet a river whose water it can’t filter. “The unit will help with ash pond treatment, paper and pulp industry or any river source, like the Brazos River in Texas and the Mississippi, which have periods of extended high solids,” Dewitt said. He said both rivers often clog with mud and debris. “This unit can handle higher solids continually, which is something we’ve never had before in our toolbelt for a UF,” he said.
“We needed a design change to treat higher turbid water,” said Director of Engineering Justin Pierce. “It’s been a known thing; there was a gap we needed to fill. This is a more robust design.”