At Kainton Corner, the booster pump station – in-line with the Upper Paskeville water treatment and water pump station – feeds the entire water distribution network to the south of Yorke Peninsula in South Australia via the Arthurton water storage tanks located some 20km away.
The challenge
Having delivered great performance for decades, the asset had reached the end of its life with civil and structural elements in poor condition, and electrical and mechanical infrastructure in need of upgrade.
In late-2019, Water Engineering Technologies was charged with delivering a turnkey pump station solution to replace the aged asset. The scope of works spanned the specification for the new plant; all electrical, mechanical and control works; and construction, operation and maintenance of this essential asset.
The Kainton Corner pump station housed three pumps, each with a phenomenal pumping capacity of more than 100L/s, that provided a flow of approximately 235L/s to the Arthurton water storage tanks (2 x 9.09ML and 1 x 32.5ML).
The new pump station design had to meet demanding hydraulic requirements, and all relevant work health and safety requirements, design standards, operator requirements for access and maintenance, stakeholder considerations and environmental responsibilities.
Supplying water to most of the Yorke Peninsula, commissioning the asset with minimal interruption to supply was critical and so carefully staged to minimise interruptions for our customers and manage any risks.
The project scope included demolition and decommissioning of the existing asset.
The solution
This project was delivered on time and within the $2.7 million budget by Water Engineering Technologies’ highly-skilled team of more than 200 people from sought after trades to mechanical and electrical engineers plus project managers.
The team at Water Engineering Technologies’ Crystal Brook workshop designed, constructed and now maintain the asset, as part of the services they provide SA Water’s water and wastewater infrastructure that exists within a huge service area ranging from Marla in South Australia’s far North to Warooka in the south, Burra in the east and Whyalla in the west.
Three 150kW Flowserve 6HPX12C end suction pumps with variable speed drives (VSD) were selected for use at the new pump station. These were connected to stainless steel and MSCL suction and discharge pipes fabricated at the Crystal Brook workshop.
All electrical works associated with controls, instrumentation, power and communications telemetry were conducted by the team.
Plant and pumping infrastructure assembly was planned and performed by Water Engineering Technologies’ mechanical tradespersons Luke Seymour and Jay Avery, among others.
Control architecture
If you think of the pumps as the heart of the station, its electrical controls are its nervous system and programmable logic controller (PLC) its brain.
Peter Hombsch, Senior Electrical Tradesperson, ensured that the performance of the new main switchboard, including Motor Control Centre and PLC, met all required safety performance, maintenance standards, asset reliability, ease of programming and rapid process fault diagnosis, and whole of lifecycle cost.
Peter developed the electrical drawings together with our electrical engineers over a five week period and performed all electrical wiring works on the switchboard over an additional three weeks. A record time for a project of this size.
The field wiring at the pump station is hard wired to the PLC and is used to transmit power, pump pressure and water flow data to the program used to control the pumps. All site information is then transmitted to Arthurton tank where it is captured and sent through to SCADA for remote monitoring and control.
These controls enable the three pumps at the Kainton Corner, located between the Paskeville pumping station and the Arthurton tank, to run sequences in synchrony with the Paskeville pump station.
Joel Gale, Senior Electrical Tradesperson, said that the team also designed and set up a radio network to transmit control and monitoring signals to be sent between the integrated assets located at Arthurton, Paskeville and Kainton Corner.
Nima Gorjian Jolfaei, Senior Manager Water Engineering Technologies, said that he was delighted in his team’s performance.
“The delivery of this complex project on time and within budget without any interruption in water supply services is a great achievement. It demanded excellent project management skills and the close coordination of specialist resources within our electrical and mechanical engineering teams,” he said.
