Projects company Tarcron Projects was appointed by Musina municipality in the Vhembe district to find a sustainable solution that would be fit for purpose, robust and simple for the small municipality to operate and maintain.

The municipality was faced with a challenge of discharge of partially treated effluent into the surrounding community areas and the environment, posing unacceptable risks to residents and the sensitive environment.

Scrapping the existing infrastructure and developing a new treatment facility would be too costly and time-consuming, and was not a feasible solution given the urgency of the situation. Tarcron required a professional solution that could be implemented quickly and effectively to minimise the damage and provide long-term resilience.

“Biorotor, our modular Rotating Biological Contactor (RBC) which could be retrofitted to the existing RBC infrastructure, presented the ideal solution for this project,” says Tarcron.

Biorotor was developed to solve exactly the issues that needed to be addressed at Musina Sewage Treatment Facility, with rapid deployment and a 10-year warranty, reinforcing Biorotor’s confidence in the robustness and reliability of the Biorotor design.

Each module comprises an assembly of discs on a solid stainless-steel shaft and an innovative independent drive system. Biorotor, in this retrofit version, was specifically designed to seamlessly and effectively modernise, and replace the failed existing system based on similar technology.

As Biorotor is fully designed and manufactured in-house, it can be tailored to fit the exact specifications of the existing infrastructure. In this way, an old treatment plant is easily transformed into a modern sewage system which is cost-effective, robust, and easy to maintain.

Further, by applying the features available to a Biorotor configuration, additional treatment capacity was provided across the aerobic phase on the same footprint, securing buffer capacity should there be any changes in operating conditions. In this instance, the capacity was augmented by more than 25%, while reducing the energy usage by more than 25%.

Six new modern Biorotor units were supplied and installed at Musina, each being retrofitted directly into the old system’s existing concrete structures.

Although the facility is in a remote location, transportation was easily coordinated since the Biorotor modules were designed to fit in a standard shipping container. This significantly simplifies the logistics, particularly in reaching more difficult and remote locations.