Infrastructure maintenance and repair is a pressing issue across many municipalities in South Africa. In George municipality, in the Western Cape, work is under way to rehabilitate some of the city’s wastewater treatment assets.

A rental Impi Combination Unit from pumping equipment and service provider Werner Pumps, which offers high-pressure jetting and vacuuming capabilities, has allowed the contractor on the job, WPCP, to undertake aspects of the job not within the company’s usual ambit.

“The municipality wanted to refurbish a wastewater treatment plant. Part of this project required pumping sludge out of the tanks from 12 m below and cleaning them,” explains Werner Pumps sales manager George Jolly.

“This is not something WPCP specialises in, so they called on Werner Pumps to assist. We sent one of our rental trucks to the site, as well as an experienced operator, to assist with this part of the job,” he says.

WPCP contracts director Dion Kuter explains that the company is a multidisciplinary water treatment business, with expertise in several technical disciplines, including designing, building, maintaining and rehabilitating major water and wastewater purification plants, as well as process water plants.

However, vacuuming sludge requires specialist equipment, and WPCP relies on partners, such as Werner Pumps, to assist with ensuring these parts of a job are accomplished correctly and to a high standard.

“We know we can rely on Werner Pumps, their operators and their rental fleet to do a good job,” he says.

Jolly says the Impi Combi Unit is a versatile machine suited to many applications.

“The units are available for hire at a daily rate, which means that customers who need a truck for a specific purpose or situation are able to access one,” he notes, adding that the Impi Combi Unit has a hydraulically driven vacuum pump, which operates at 1 700 m3/h.

“We were able to achieve an average of seven to eight loads a day in a 10-hour shift (at ± 7 500 ℓ per load), while other (smaller) vacuum trucks on site also achieved an average of eight to nine loads a day but carried less volume. This included offloading the sludge at the designated dumping spot, which was a 10-km round trip per load. A total of 560 m3 of sludge was removed during the two-week job.”

The Werner Pumps Impi Combi Units are premium-quality, locally manufactured truck-mounted units, built in Springs, with a tilting 12 500 ℓ, 304 stainless steel tank, and have a hydraulically driven high-pressure pump capacity of 295 ℓ/min at 150 bar.

The high-pressure pump is also fitted with a pneumatically operated regulating valve, making infinite pressure adjustment possible, thus increasing the safety of the operator during use.