Arsenic Removal Filtration Skid

This water treatment system removes arsenic using two vertical filter vessels, along with pumps and a valve manifold, all packaged onto a single skid so it arrives as one unit instead of a set of parts to assemble on site.

The customer specified the filter units and the process, and we didn’t select the major components. What I designed, and our shop built, was the skid and the piping that connects everything. It’s a well-defined job: take a set of vessels, pumps, and valves that have to be connected a certain way, and turn that into something that can be built, shipped, lifted, installed, operated, and maintained.

The base is 4 x 4 inch 304 stainless channel, with schedule 40 PVC piping and fittings for the process connections. Most of the constraints were practical ones. The piping had to connect everything the process required while staying inside a footprint that could be moved and set down. Valves had to be reachable by hand, the vessels had to be serviceable without taking apart the pipework around them, and everything had to be supported so the skid could be lifted without loading the piping.

Hart had its own machine and weld shops downstairs, so I regularly brought preliminary drawings to the people who would build them and asked whether the design suited our machines, fixtures, and material. Those conversations were quick before release and saved a lot of rework after.