Essex & Suffolk Water’s Layer Water Treatment Works in Colchester needed a solution to control the growth of algae on their filter beds. The algae grow particularly quickly in direct sunlight and removing it was proving to be an expensive and labour-intensive task.
Placing breathable fabric over the filter beds would block sunlight and help to limit the blooms of algae, however the scale of the beds posed a novel mechanical handling challenge.
SCX engineered three 45m wide rotating gantry frames capable of deploying and retracting more than 2.5 square kilometres of fabric over the surface of 18 filter beds. The frames travel on bogies along 400 metres of track embedded in the banks of the beds.
The solution significantly reduces the need for manual cleaning, saving time and cost in the company’s ongoing water treatment processes.