Signalling its expansion into the economy’s industrial segment, pump and dredging specialist, Integrated Pump Rental recently made short work of cleaning the sediment from the reservoirs of a customer in tile manufacturing.

According to Integrated Pump Rental managing director Lee Vine, the tile making process involves wastewater being fed into storage tanks and then through a filter press.

“During this process, an aeration system keeps the slurry in suspension and ensures the correct consistency for pumping,” says Vine. “With the aeration system under-performing, the slurry tended to settle in the reservoirs, reducing the water storage capacity and undermining the efficient running of the plant.”

The sediment also creates a potential environmental hazard should the tanks overflow, but its density makes it difficult to pump out.

This challenge in the water storage tanks – which measure about eight metres square and hold some 200 m3 of waste water each – then has a knock-on effect down the line, causing inefficiencies in the downstream process. In this particular operation, it also became necessary to incur the additional cost of introducing municipal water to the system.

“Our team was quickly able to assess the situation, and proposed the use of our innovative hydro solution, which has proven so successful and cost effective in desilting water reservoirs at mines or wastewater treatment plants,” he says. “The solution proved to be very successful and cleared the tanks of the sediment that had built up, allowing the customer to get their process back on track.”

With its high quality Grindex slurry pumps and purpose engineered hydro mining monitor guns, Integrated Pump Rental’s hydro cleaning units are capable of extracting high tonnages of sediment from reservoirs. Vine emphasises that applying a regular cleaning programme need not be onerous for end-users, and will ensure that their tanks are sediment-free in a range of applications.