Recycled Water Maintains Jet/Vac Flow

Innovative combo truck is always ready to start working – even with an empty water tank.
Recycled Water Maintains Jet/Vac Flow
The RECycler 315 jet/vac truck from J. Hvidtved Larsen A/S eliminates the need to stop working to refill the water tank. Instead, the truck removes water from debris, then cleans it and reuses it.

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Imagine a combination truck that could head out every day with an empty water tank — and never require stops to fill up, either.

Without time-consuming water refill runs, productivity and its close relative, profitability, would jump dramatically. With less cargo, gas mileage would improve while expenses such as fuel and water would decrease. Moreover, you could market your company as a truly sustainable, green-minded business that significantly contributes to conserving a precious natural resource.

Henry Sorensen, fleet manager for Cleveland-based C&K Industrial Services, doesn’t have to imagine all that. It’s his reality every day, courtesy of the RECycler 315, an innovative water reclamation vac truck built by J. Hvidtved Larsen A/S in Denmark.

“There’s no need to stop and hook the truck up to a fire hydrant,” Sorensen explains. “Instead, the truck removes water from debris we take from a sewer line, then cleans it and reuses it. And we don’t have to pay for water that comes from a sewer, which is significant to us because we can spend anywhere from $1,200 to $1,600 a week on water (for the company’s 18 conventional vac trucks).

“We don’t have to shut down on a job site to refill the water tank,” he continues. “That’s critical because sometimes we aren’t close to a fire hydrant … and you can waste half a day driving back and forth to fill up with water. As such, the RECycler can usually outwork two of our other vac trucks — double our productivity.”

C&K bought the RECycler 315 about a year ago after seeing one at the Water & Wastewater Equipment, Treatment & Transport (WWETT) Show. The unit features a 2014 Kenworth T-800 truck chassis; a water pump made by Chemac Inc (URACA) (124 gpm at 2,175 psi); a vacuum pump made by CVS Engineering (1,825 cfm at 25 inches Hg); a hydraulic, swiveling hose reel that carries 660 feet of 1 1/4-inch-diameter hose; and a second hose reel for smaller-diameter hoses.

But two features set the machine apart from conventional vacuum trucks. The first is the water-recycling system. Here’s a simplified explanation of how it works: The truck vacuums up water-filled sludge into the debris tank. The reclamation system sucks that water out of the debris, then sends it through a set of filters and cyclones that separate heavy solid particles. From there, the solids go into the sludge tank and water is pushed into the water tank, where it travels through another set of even finer filters. Then it’s ready to be used for waterjetting operations, Sorensen says.

“It takes about 15 minutes to clean enough water to start jetting,” Sorensen says.

“But we have to be cleaning a sewer with running water in it. If it’s a dry sewer, we have to bring water along. But if it has decent flow, there’s no problem starting a job without any water in the tank.” When a cleaning operation concludes, any water still in the tank gets dumped back into the sewer system.

The truck offers another unique feature: a pneumatically operated partition that allows the operator to make the water tank bigger and the debris tank smaller, or vice versa, as needed. At the start of a cleaning operation, the partition is positioned as far back as possible to allow for more water and less debris capacity. But the partition gets moved forward as work progresses, so the debris section gets bigger and the water section gets smaller. When crews complete a typical line cleaning, two-thirds of the tank is devoted to debris and the remaining third to water, he explains.

Moreover, in a typical cleaning, 90 percent of the debris is so dry that it’s ready to be hauled straight to a landfill, with no need for time-consuming decanting, Sorensen says.

“Eliminating that step makes us more cost-effective for customers,” he notes.

In addition, the RECycler 315’s gas mileage is nearly twice as good as a conventional vac truck. And it operates so quietly that workers can talk to each other while standing next to it — a feature that allows C&K to do more nighttime work in residential neighborhoods, he adds.

“It’s totally different to operate compared to a conventional truck,” Sorensen points out. “It takes about two weeks of training for our employees to learn how to operate it. But they love the truck,” he adds, noting another feature: a hydraulically powered suction hose that comes out the boom with no manual handling required. “No one needs to manhandle the hose — the machine does all the work.”

All that efficiency and productivity carries a price tag of about $600,000. But Sorensen says the investment is well worth it. The truck will pay for itself eventually through reduced operating expenses and increased productivity, and customers already are specifically asking C&K to use the RECycler 315 on their jobs, he notes.

“Is it a game-changer? Absolutely,” Sorensen says, noting that C&K — which also offers industrial cleaning services and operates in Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — recently placed an order for two more RECycler 315s. “That should tell you how happy we are with this machine. It helps us tremendously in many ways, from job efficiency to sales efforts; once customers see what it can do, it sells itself. This is the future of vacuum trucks.”



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