LARGE SCALE EQUIPMENT

For large operations and especially in a sustained deployment it is likely that some contractor support will be required with suitably large scale equipment. This assumes of course that the civilian water infrastructure is not able to cope or secure enough.

As a result of acute need for water in Iraq in 2003 ACWA delivered five mobile reverse osmosissystems to the British Army as an Urgent Operational Requirement.

ACWA Reverse Osmosis UOR – Iraq 2003

Each system consisted of two 20 foot ISO containers and the first was delivered in less than 7 weeks with the final one being ready in 10 weeks. The first container carried the pre-treatment and cleaning equipment and the second held the Reverse Osmosis treatment system

The benefit of this equipment was its flexibility and throughput; it could use fresh or sea water and a range of contamination. Depending on the quality of the feed water up to 550 tonnes per day could be produced. If a municipal source was used that had relatively high quality water, the first container could be bypassed and reverse osmosis only used for final treatment.

In Afghanistan, KBR operate a water treatment and bottling plant at Camp Bastion that produces about 40,000 litres per day, enough for all the sites inhabitants and to use for deployed forces.

KBR Bastion Water Plant

The £11million plant, started production in February 2008,samples the water for contaminants every 20 minutes and produces huge quantities of both potable and palatable water. The water complies with all relevant UK legislation including the Water Supply (Water Quality Regulations) 2000 and Natural Mineral Water, Spring Water and Bottled Water (England) Regulations 2007, just so you know!

KBR Bastion Water Plant

Samples are also regularly sent to the Institute of Naval Medicine in the UK for additional checking.

The bottles are square to prevent them rolling in vehicle interiors and thicker than commercial bottles to prevent bursting and leakage.

KBR Bastion Water Plant

The bottles themselves are made from 33g PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) preforms, small pre moulded pieces of plastic that are ‘blown’ to produce the full size bottle using special equipment and hot air. A pallet of pre forms makes 11 pallets of bottles, reducing transport needs.

Battle to keep troops hydrated 20.12.10

40 million bottles quench Bastion thirst 30.11.11

The equipment used in the treatment and bottling plant was supplied by Karcher Futuretech and uses two WT1600purification and two WBP700bottling systems.

Karcher Futuretech WB700 Bottling System

Pallets are wrapped three times using a Robopac Rotaplat 506 wrapping machine to ensure if the pallets are air dropped they don’t burst open.

ROBOPAC ROTOPLAT 506 PFS

Packaging is an interesting subject, no, honest!

Even though using PET preforms is relatively space efficient they still have to be transported and some of that is fresh air.

PET Preforms

The packaging industry has a number of innovative products that might be utilised to reduce consumable volume.

Flexible plastic bags can be filled and sealed in situ, rather than pre forms this system uses rolls of plastic and as can be appreciated is much more space efficient than bottles. Recipients gain access to the water by tearing the bag or using straws.

Karcher Futuretech produce a transportable bagging system called the WPS 1600 GT, click here for a brochure

Pre printed pouches, made with stiffer materials, with an integral resealable drinking spout could be used;

The external surface could be printed with survival instructions, locations of distribution points, emergency broadcast radio frequencies and other useful information although some of this would need to be overprinted in situ. These occupy more space than bags (in an unfilled state) but are still more space efficient PET pre forms.

Water Packaging – Pouch Water Packaging – Bag in a Box

Rapak and Schollare global leaders in packaging solutions and their familiar ‘wine box’ may be a practical addition to the packaging mix. Scholl have an integrated solution called the JerriBox (no sniggering at the back) and again, pre-printing could be used to disseminate relevant information.

Palletised liquid containers

Butyl Productsin the UKsupply many military and civilian organisations with flexible tanks and storage bladders and there are many similar manufacturers.

A bladder tank could be filled directly whilst loaded on to a flat bed truck and water dispensed from there with a simple tap stand, no pumping at the dispensing point would be needed, gravity would do the job.

Rubberised water tank

If forklift trucks are available then IBC containers become a very practical option. Again, extracting suitable products from the civilian packaging and transportation market allows the prevalent civilian infrastructure to be used.

A sample of manufacturers includes Rapak, Bulk Handling Australia, Fluid Bag, Greiffand Arlington Packagingbut what characterises them is a common need for space and cost efficiency, exactly what is needed for this application.

TRANSPORTATION

The Water Carriage Pack is a neat solution that allows GS trailers and vehicles to be used for water carriage.

Moving bottled water over large distances is not efficient but sometimes there are no options and bottled water is ideally suited for replenishment in the field, air dropping or helicopter delivery for example.

Palletising the bottles means they can be easily transported using a wide variety of vehicles.

The ubiquitous 20L black polythene jerrycan will be familiar to most but to move bulk fuel and water the Royal Logistics Corps operates a fleet of Oshkosh Close Support Tankers, the water variant can carry 18,000 litres, 57 were purchased as part of the wider programme.

These use the tractor variant of the MTVR truck.

From the Army website;

The Wheeled Tanker is a highly mobile vehicle that is deployed in the Logistic Support Regiments and Transport Regiments and forms the backbone of the British Army’s bulk fuel and water transportation. It has deployed on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and can be fitted with enhanced blast-proof armour for driver and crew protection.

Some more pictures from my good friends at Plain Military;

Close Support Tanker Close Support Tanker

Hooklift, DROPS style tank containers can be used.

The examples below are in German Army service manufactured by WEW.

Demountable water ISO Container Demountable water ISO Container

Rubber compound Pillow Tanks are also commonly used to transport bulk water.

Trends

Water supply remains a core Royal Engineer competency although we seem to have made the decision to rely on greater contractor support for sustained and large scale operations.

Materials technology and applying that to water supply is advancing a pace and no doubt novel technologies will be introduced in due course.

Although the large, centralised, purification and bottling plants might offer a great deal of production efficiency, security and a high quality product the sheer logistical effort of getting this to the point of use means that this may only be used in limited circumstances and the more conventional concept of water purification and generation in situ used more often, even if this might involve some of the newer concepts like those from Lifesaver Systems.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 861