The Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing (TIEM) Plant in Columbus, Indiana manufactures industrial fork lifts. The ferrous metal finishing, phosphatizing and painting operations yield wastewater with high metals concentration.

Complete Water Services (CWS) was retained to increase the capacity and effectiveness of the plant’s WWTP.

• Double the capacity of existing system to 86,400 gpd
• Reuse as much of existing system hardware as possible
• Design/Build system with small footprint (40’ X 45’)
• Improve stability, efficiency, ease of operation and maintenance
• Effectively treat a wide range of contaminants
• Increase capability to treat surges of contaminant volume and concentration
• Return as much treated water as possible to the plant for process water
• Aggressive schedule, coincident with planned plant maintenance shutdowns
• Tight budge

TIEM agreed with CWS’ proposal of a cost-saving two phased approach.

• Flow equalization
• pH neutralization
• Chemical flocculation/coagulation
• Clarification
• Sludge de-watering
• 40% of original treatment plant equipment was reused
• During the scheduled 5 day plant shutdown, equipment from the original plant was disassembled, moved and incorporated into the new WWTP. Final tie-ins were made, and the new WWTP was operational before the manufacturing plant went back online.

• Ultrafiltration
• Reverse Osmosis
• More than 90% of treated water to be recycled into the plant
• Treated water will exceed TIEM’s stringent purity require­ments for final-rinse process water.
• As with Phase I, the WWTP will be designed to allow all modifications, final tie-ins and startup to be completed during scheduled plant shutdown.

• Design Maximized Use of Existing Equipment
• Brought On-Line With No Interruption of Manufacturing