A Time & Place for Less Technology

When Less Technology is More

Ask a Conventional Activated Sludge (CAS) wastewater treatment plant supplier why CAS is better than a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) wastewater treatment plant and they will be quick to point out that they use significantly less energy (alpha factor), don’t require complex chemical cleaning processes and they don’t need to have expensive membranes replaced every 5 odd years.

Ask an MBR wastewater treatment supplier the same thing and they will quickly point out that they need half the space and can produce a higher quality effluent.

A quick summary – by Hydroflux EPCO who are both a CAS and an MBR supplier based around 600EP systems – Ratings are out of 10 with 10 being highest.

Hydroflux EPCO supplies both CAS systems (RoadTrain®) and MBR Systems (Mena) throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, which leads to a lot of location, access and support diversity.

Remote tropical resort islands off the coast of Fiji and jungle mine sites in the middle of PNG require more robust systems that can be assembled with simple hand tools and operated and maintained with unskilled labour. Available area is plentiful, and power generated locally via diesel generators is expensive. Technical support is often days or even weeks away. In these locations the CAS RoadTrain® is the obvious choice, as Hydroflux EPCO’s 200 plus RoadTrain® installations testify.

However, when space is at a premium, operation and maintenance labour is semi-skilled and technical support is close by then the Mena MBR packages come into their own. The smaller sizes allow for the MBR systems to be fully containerised and preassembled, making deployment, installation and commissioning faster and cost efficient, especially on semi remote greenfield sites.

Regardless of your location, from remote tropical island, back of Bourke mine site to suburban residential building estate, Hydroflux EPCO can unbiasedly tailor the most practical solution for your wastewater treatment needs.