Tertiary treatment systems for pressurised wastewater treatment plants

What are tertiary treatment systems?

Tertiary treatment systems are generally packaged filter systems installed after secondary treatment plants. Theses systems provide additional treatment to wastewater and are an ideal solution for homeowners, engineers and local authorities alike. The multiple benefits include they considerably reduce the footprint of traditional percolation areas, as well as the risk of clogged or poorly constructed underground percolation areas.

At Tricel, we offer two types of tertiary treatment systems for pressurised wastewater treatment plants:

1. Tricel Sandcel Sand Polishing Filter which uses layers of certified sands and gravel with a specially designed pipework network to disperse and treat the effluent.
2. Tricel Puraflo uses a similar pressurised pipe network over a coconut fibre bed to treat the effluent.

Pumping the effluent to the tertiary systems

Most tertiary systems get positioned raised above the outlet of a packaged wastewater treatment system. In such cases, a pump is required to pump the effluent from the secondary wastewater treatment plant to the tertiary system.

Two options are possible:

1. Integrated packaged systems with a pump for ease of installation (Tricel Novo wastewater treatment plant can come supplied with an integrated pump)
2. Separate the pump chambers following the wastewater treatment plant or septic tank.

Both options are perfectly suitable and will deliver a similar flow.

Importance of the equal distribution of effluent

The Puraflo system has been designed to accept and evenly distribute the pumped effluent from a packaged wastewater treatment plant. This design incorporates a low-pressure pipe network that is specifically designed and tailored to suit the distance and head from the secondary treatment plant while ensuring the pipe network gets pressurised as per design specifications.

This design prolongs the life of the media and ensures the achievement of the optimum treatment levels of the effluent before discharging from the unit.

Tricel has vast experience of other dispersion system types for additional product applications within the Tricel product range, including tipping buckets and gravity-fed pipe channels. Our testing has found that these options do not operate as effectively when effluent is pumped to them and only work well when receiving gravity-fed effluent.

Therefore, Tricel only offers pressurised network systems for Tertiary products. Pressurised tertiary treatment systems such as the Puraflo guarantee equal dispersion of the effluent, which allows for better treatment quality of the effluent.

Advantages of Puraflo tertiary treatment plant

• Reduced footprint required
• Plug and play: ready to install, supply and fit
• Tricel comes and connect all the pipework and commissioning the unit.
• Quick installation: ½ day to install in most cases
• Factory build
• Independently PIA tested
• Experience 25 years + with Bord na Mona
• Over 100,000 installations globally

How does Puraflo work?

Maintenance of Puraflo and peat

From June 2022, a new generation of Puraflo modules is available. It uses coconut fibre a media instead of peat and provides a very high treatment efficiency.

Bord na Móna, the only official approved supplier of peat is no longer harvesting peat in Ireland. As a replacement, Tricel has developed and offer Puraflo replacement kits with Coconut fibre ensuring your Puraflo modules carry on being maintained and keep on treating the effluent to the same high standards.

Replacement coconut fibre (coir fibre) or kits for Puraflo modules are available from Tricel.

Contact our technical team who can guide you.

If you have any questions or would like more information about Tertiary Treatment Systems for pressurised wastewater treatment plants, Tricel Puraflo, or any other wastewater treatment systems, get in touch with us.