Recycled Water Supply System for Facilities

Water Supply Problem at Remote Facilities

Providing water supply and sanitation at highway gas stations is a serious challenge for the petroleum product supply industry. The speaker analyzes the situation using the example of LUKOIL-Yugnefteprodukt facilities located along federal highways. The remoteness from settlements, deep groundwater levels, and strict requirements for sanitary protection zones (due to handling petroleum products) make drilling artesian wells impossible. As a result, enterprises incur enormous costs for the delivery of drinking and industrial water, as well as for the removal of liquid domestic waste, the volumes of which at large gas stations exceed a thousand cubic meters per month.

Search for a Technological Solution: Abandoning Traditional Methods

The presentation details the process of selecting the optimal wastewater treatment technology. Traditional methods proved ineffective in the specific conditions of gas stations:

• Biological treatment: Local treatment facilities (LTF) cannot cope with shock loads (for example, when several tourist buses arrive). Microorganisms die due to the unstable environment and weather conditions, turning LTFs into ordinary storage tanks.
• Chemical and physicochemical methods: Require the constant addition of reagents and the presence of qualified maintenance personnel, which is economically unfeasible and distracts gas station operators from their direct duties.

Therefore, a strict technical specification was formed: the system must be autonomous, reagent-free, and provide water quality suitable for use in a recycled water supply (toilet cisterns, territory washing, replenishing fire tanks).

Development and Piloting of an Innovative Plant

Using the example of a pilot project implemented jointly with developers from Sevastopol, the speaker shows how a unique deep purification complex was created. The plant, housed in a 20-foot sea container, is based on the methods of electrochemical coagulation and destruction. Key achievements:

• Reagent-free urea removal: The problem of purifying wastewater from ammonium group substances without the use of chemicals was successfully solved.
• Complete disinfection: All microorganisms die in the electrochemical destruction unit; the output water is colorless and odorless, complying with strict sanitary standards.
• High performance: The plant returns up to 95% of purified water into circulation and is capable of mitigating shock loads of up to 10 cubic meters per hour thanks to intercepting tanks.

Economic Efficiency and Prospects

The implementation of a recycled water supply system reduces water supply and sanitation costs by 80 – 90%. The project is recognized as commercially successful with a payback period of less than 10 years. In the future, it is planned to replicate the technology at other facilities and refine the disposal system for the generated sludge (transferring it from the 4th to the 5th hazard class by crystallization into sand).

What you will learn from this webinar:

• How to organize an autonomous water supply at facilities without access to central networks and artesian wells?
• Why traditional biological LTFs are ineffective during shock loads and how to solve this problem?
• How electrochemical coagulation and destruction methods work in domestic wastewater treatment?
• How to automate the operation of treatment facilities to eliminate manual labor by operators?
• What is the economic benefit of implementing recycled water supply systems at an enterprise?