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A Swift water recycling solution

> The partnership with Swift Electroplating helps deliver a great outcome for the environment by reducing water and electricity usage.

A successful partnership between Transpacific Environmental Services and and Swift Electroplating has helped deliver a great outcome for the environment by reducing water and electricity usage.
 
Swift Electroplating is a medium-sized Sydney company specialising in the application of decorative and industrial finishes to a range of products including door hardware, tap ware, microphones, shop fittings, and general machine and engineering components.
 
Water is used extensively in electroplating to rinse components after they have been processed through the cleaners, pickles (a solution that takes rust off steel) and the various plating baths which apply the final finishes.
 
Swift was using about 50,000 litres of water a day, equating to about 20 million litres a year. The waste water contained heavy metals and was discharged to trade waste.

Swfit Technical Manager, Don Chapple, said they were determined to reduce water usage.
 
“We applied for, and received, a grant from the NSW Government Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). The grant partly contributed to the cost of installing a waste water recycling system based on Transpacific’s Ion Exchange system.”
 
Transpacific Environmental Services, designed and installed an ion exchange recycling system, involving a period of pre-qualifications, site testing and performance analysis, and incorporated the system into the existing production line.

Don said the successful outcome was a true partnership. “If Transpacific just put that system into a plating shop it wouldn’t work. It had to be integrated correctly.

“I knew how I wanted to integrate the system and we worked together to achieve that – we didn’t lose one hour of production,” he said.
 
Josh Richter, Transpacific Environmental Services Business Unit Manager said all the wastewater from the plating baths and drains was piped to resin chambers using existing piping in most cases. “The wastewater is processed through the system and the heavy metals are removed, allowing the water to be reused continuously.

“Not only is Swift able to recycle its water, but the water quality is better and the final products are cleaner with lower reject rates,” Josh said. The ion exchange system has helped Swift cut its water usage by 89 per cent – down to less than 5000 litres a day, and 2.2 million litres a year.

“Environmentally this is a good result, and our customers appreciate that our endeavours in this area mean that we’re here to stay,” Don said. Josh said the ion exchange recycling system had been adapted for use in powder coating and electroplating businesses in Sydney.