Project: Kimbe Iron Removal Project

Client: Water Papua New Guinea (PNG)

Products: Krohne Meters, Pioneer Tanks, Deferum Filters

Kimbe is the capital of the province of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea and the largest settlement on the island. The bustling town of Kimbe is the third largest port in Papua New Guinea and is the fastest growing city in the South Pacific.

Kimbe source of water is from several bores and the township needs approximately 3ML/day to service the community. Several of these source water bores contained high concentration levels of iron. Whilst the iron is not so much a health risk, it does cause discolouration and has infrastructure cost as the iron oxides in the distribution network.

In February 2020, Pacific Technologies successfully installed and commissioned 4 Deferum Filters and 19KL Pioneer Tank, that remove the iron from the bore water prior to treatment at the Kimbe Water Treatment Plant.

Deferum is a Latin term. It means simply ‘remove iron’. Deferum based water filtration systems use a hydro-automatic gravity filter to treat water and remove impurities. This ecologically friendly process can remove much more than iron. This system also removes dissolved gases such as hydrogen sulphide, methane, chromacity, manganese, radon, arsenic and carbon dioxide. Particulate and organic matter can be removed as well, making for a clean and pure end product. Deferum systems can deal with bore water with iron content between 0.3 and 50 ppm without reagent treatment. These systems are low maintenance. They use no pumps, no electrical parts and no valves. They have no rotating or other moving parts to wear out and require replacement. Most systems will rarely need maintenance after installation. Each system is easy to set up and does not require an operator, or even shelter. The actual filter is good for roughly 25 years and is made of easily sourced materials. Very few Deferum systems require anything to be replaced over the lifetime of the system.

In addition to the installation and commissioning of the Filters, Pacific Technologies were also responsible for works around Bore -10 which included:

A new 13 kW bore pump and control panel, installed and commissioned complete with new 80mm x 27m of PE pipe in bore.

2 x Waterflux 3070C flowmeters c/w PT Orange RTU for Bore flow monitoring and plant outlet flow totals.

20ft Container Workshop handed Over to Water PNG KIMBE BCM.

Key Outcomes:

Iron Concentration 3.42mg/l from Bore and, after the Deferum Filters, was reduced to 0.33mg/l. This is below the World Health Standard of 0.5mg/l.

The upgrade of the Bore pump has increased capacity by a factor of four (4). This was a key outcome as Kimbe had water supply issues due to the rapid and continuing population growth.

New VFD Control panel was installed and commissioned to protect the pump from supply voltage variations.