Managing Water Use In Quarries

by Atlantic Pumps Admin July 20, 2021

Water is a hard worker when it comes to quarrying.

That’s why you want your water abstraction and usage to be as economical and sustainable as possible.

At Atlantic Pumps, we realise that pumps are one of the world’s biggest users of energy and also account for a huge amount of energy waste. The negative impact of high energy usage is well documented, from higher costs through to higher emissions and environmental damage.

With the planet’s resources under pressure, the last thing anyone wants is wasteful industrial machinery compounding the problem. We’ve made it a priority to understand and grasp energy waste at site level and we’ve invested a huge amount of time studying and reporting on this.

Now, with the results to hand, we are confident that our sustainable approach to our work will reduce energy wastage from pumps by 20% at the average site.

Let’s look at fluid management and fluid movement in construction materials to highlight the importance of our research and development.

It begins with water abstraction, which is then managed around the quarry. After dewatering of the quarry phase, it goes on to the washing of the aggregates. That leaves dirty water to be used and recycled, more often than not needing treatment to remove the dirt before recycling.

We believe that innovation is critical to sustainability. No one really believes that we can continue to do what we’ve always done and get the same results. We have a culture of innovation that runs through much of what we do, which has helped us to create our EnviroHub system.

Its core purpose is two-fold. The first is to settle out solids to make it easier to recycle to resultant cleaner water. We have developed a range of lamella tanks of different sizes for this purpose.

The second is monitoring the water quality and intervening if it’s wrong. For instance, if the pH is too high, or if there is too much dirt in it, our EnviroHub system will pick up on this and immediately alert you. This is what our EnviroHub CT10 pH Correction Tank is for. This simple, self-contained unit effectively ensures that environmental pollution concerns regarding water with a high pH are safely met. This ensures compliance with authorities such as the Environment Agency and water boards.

And thanks to our innovation we’re making a commitment to help our customers to recycle twice as much by 2025 than they did in 2015.