1000 COANDA Grit Washing Plant installations

At the IFAT 2005 in Munich the unrivalled market leader in the field of grit washing plants presents itself as a real champion: The 1,000 COANDA Grit Washing units sold impressively demonstrate that this plant is being accepted as the standard solution in mechanical wastewater treatment.

When the first pilot plants were built in 1994, many considered it unnecessary to additionally wash the grit produced by a sewage treatment plant. The industry took a stance against this technology regarding it as technically infeasible. When attending site a sense of amusement by the plant operators was apparent as we arrived on site in our blue overalls, carrying tools and hoses to work on the COANDA Grit Washing Plant.

But it worked! It worked so well that Huber decided to patent the COANDA Grit Washing Plant and introduced it market wide immediately. The launch was a complete if unexpected success. It should be noted that none of the competitors – with the exception of a small mechanical engineering company, realised that contaminated sewage treatment plant grit could be washed at all.

Today, 10 years later, sewage treatment grit washing plants are state-of-the-art technology. Following our lead virtually all of our competitors now offer their grit washing plant. The fact that about 95% of our competitors imitate or follow the HUBER principle underlines the excellent function of our COANDA Grit Washing Plant. With the exception of a few competitors who simply copy the original and consequently face legal action for patent infringement, the others try omitting one patented feature which results in the loss of equipment function and performance. As a result, these copies have significant weak points compared to the original, including the following:

• The plant requires < 4 mm preliminary screening resulting in a large amount of unwashed grit/gravel bypassing the screening process.
   
• Higher wear due to the high speed stirrer
   
• Excessive wear caused by large pieces of stone and gravel being in contact with the stirrer.
   
• The plant settings have to be changed for coarse grit/gravel or fine grit.
   
• The plant has a very high surface characteristic and is therefore unable to achieve the requested separation efficiency.
   
• The plant has no separate discharge for washed out organics.
   
• The plant works with a constant fluidised bed and therefore achieves only sporadic satisfactory results.

At the present time investments required by legislation are frequently postponed due to a lack of funds. The few grit washing projects that are undertaken are subject to increasingly intense competition resulting, in most cases, price being the deciding factor at the cost of functionality and technical features. It is only after the project has been completed and a short time has elapsed that it is found that the separation and washing requirements are not met, the plant produces excessive wear or the minerals yield is unsatisfactory. This then means that an investment is required in order to meet the plant requirements.

Continuity and quality has been proven with the Huber unit with over 1000 units in operation. The original Huber unit offers maximum separation and washing efficiency supported by many years of experience and state-of-the-art technology for sewage plant grit treatment. Furthermore, the COANDA Grit Washing Plant can easily be integrated into systems that additionally treat sewer grit, sink pit contents or road refuse. Please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be delighted to show you one of our 1000 reference installations worldwide. Our challenge is customer satisfaction!