August 3 2020

Rode to work in the morning,
followed by 1 x day shift: Water Treatment Plant. Then home again by bike.

Today was a bit different as it's the first Monday of the month. Where I work we do a monthly rotation between three functional areas. As of today and for the rest of the month, I will be stationed at the Sludge Dewatering Plant as the on-duty operator.

"Sludge" is a by-product of coagulation and is basically mud.

It's a concentrated mix of organic matter and water and is in essence the bulk of the material that is separated from raw source water to make it drinkable.

The WTP where I work has a centrifuge and two ancient filter presses for dealing with it's sludge output.

Converted wine presses bought from a winemaker many decades ago, apparently. Or so the story goes.

These things are hefty, hulking, complicated beasties of machinery.

Well and truly passed their prime but somehow still holding on.

They require manual discharging, which means actual human intervention. Each time a press cycle has finished, all the plates have to be cleared, to make way for the next press cycle.

Each press has 144 plates, there's two presses, you have to scrape each plate clean with a rake-sized paddle. If you're doing a double discharge, you empty both presses at once.

It's chaotic and hard to describe if you haven't seen it.

It's a full on manual job and good exercise as well.

Today there was one to empty, but tomorrow there will be two.

Here's what it looks like from one side.

More tomorrow, maybe!

@goingbike