Mobile pre-design stations that characterise the source water and the effluent — flow, BOD / COD / TSS, contaminant profile, treatability trials — before a permanent plant is committed. Skid-mounted, containerised or trailer-based, deployed for two weeks to twelve months to retire the risk that a permanent plant gets sized for the wrong water. The single most efficient intervention before any greenfield treatment-plant capital decision.
The Single Most Important Pre-Capital Decision
Water-treatment plant is sized to the worst-case feed it has to handle. If the design data is wrong, the plant will be wrong — oversized (capital waste) or undersized (constant exceedances). On greenfield sites and sites where the historical sampling is incomplete or seasonal, the most efficient single intervention is to drop a water assessment station on the source for a few weeks or months before committing to a permanent plant.
The financial argument: a 6-month assessment campaign typically costs 1–3 % of the eventual plant Capital expenditure and reliably eliminates the kind of design errors (turbidity spikes, BOD/COD seasonality, undisclosed contaminants, treatability surprises) that would otherwise cost 30–60 % of Capital expenditure to retrofit after commissioning. Across our project portfolio, every assessment campaign has paid for itself many times over.
Three Linked Roles
Continuous flow and quality logging at the proposed intake or effluent point. Captures diurnal, weekly and seasonal variation. Identifies storm-event spikes, dry-season concentration creep and any process-cycle synchronisation.
Pilot-scale (0.1–5 m³/day) treatment train run on the real feed. Validates the proposed unit operations — coagulant choice, filter loading, biological yield, membrane fouling rate — against the actual water rather than a textbook composition.
End-of-campaign report with sized-and-validated treatment train, design Capital expenditure and Operating expenditure, sensitivity envelope. Goes directly into the FEED of the permanent plant.
Three Common Builds
| Configuration | Deployment | Capacity | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trailer-based | Tow with 4×4; sets up in hours | 0.1–1 m³/day | Short campaigns, multi-site survey, source mapping |
| Skid-mounted | Heli sling, light truck | 0.5–3 m³/day | Treatability trials, remote sites, modular extension |
| Containerised (10′ or 20′) | ISO container, crane lift | 1–10 m³/day | Long campaigns, multi-process validation, year-long monitoring |
| Hub-and-spoke | Container hub + satellite skids | Project-specific | Watershed-scale studies; large industrial sites with multiple effluent streams |
What the Station Measures, Continuously
Flow, temperature, pressure, depth and conductivity logged at 1-minute resolution. Inflow and outflow flow meters with paired turbidity probes.
pH, ORP, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, hardness, alkalinity, chloride, sulphate, ammonia. On-board ISE rack with daily auto-calibration.
BOD, COD, TOC by rapid on-board analyser or daily grab sample. Sample autosamplers with refrigerated storage for laboratory archive.
TSS, settleable solids, particle-size distribution. Settling-column rig for treatability and SVI measurement.
Heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals by grab sample. On-board sample preparation; samples couriered to accredited lab.
Coliform / E. coli rapid screening; bacteriophage tracer trials; sterility validation for pharmaceutical and food applications.
eDNA sampler for biodiversity baseline; chlorophyll, algal-toxin probes for reservoir studies.
Rain gauge, level sensors, weather station, catchment flow modelling tie-in for storm-event characterisation.
Real Treatment on the Real Feed
The treatability side of the station is a miniature version of the eventual plant. The exact configuration is matched to the suspected end design, but the toolkit below covers what we typically install. Comparison of two or three competing trains in parallel is straightforward and is the standard way to pick the right one.
Static drum or self-cleaning screen, sand-trap, equalisation tank. Sets the boundary for the pilot.
Jar-test bench plus continuous in-line dosing rig for ferric, alum, PAC or polymer.
Multimedia, GAC and cartridge pilot columns. Logs head-loss curve and breakthrough time.
Pilot MBBR or SBR for BOD / nutrient kinetics. Establishes design SRT and oxygen demand.
UF and RO pilot rigs for flux, recovery and fouling-rate measurement on the actual feed.
UV reactor with online UVT sensor; chlorine demand test; ozone contactor pilot for refractory organics.
Acid / caustic / lime dosing pilot with reaction-time and overshoot characterisation.
Six-Stage Programme, 8–26 Weeks
Define the project question and the data the assessment needs to produce.
Configuration, analytics suite, pilot trains, telemetry. Fixed-scope estimate.
Transport to site, set down on temporary foundation, hook into source water.
2–26 weeks of continuous logging plus weekly treatability trials. Live data streamed to project team.
Lift out, return to base, sample chain-of-custody to lab.
Treatment train recommendation, Capital/Operating parameter envelope, FEED-ready data pack.
Typical Triggers
Brand-new water-treatment plant being proposed for an unmonitored source. Assessment retires the risk that the wrong process is built.
Existing plant scheduled for capacity uplift or process change. Assessment characterises any process drift since the original design.
Industrial process change upstream (new product line, raw-material switch) changes the effluent profile. Assessment quantifies it before downstream impact.
Plant non-conformity. Assessment characterises what is actually arriving vs. design assumption and identifies what to fix.
Multi-site survey for a utility or industrial operator to map sources and identify the best abstraction or discharge point.
Technology-selection question (e.g. MBBR vs SBR, or PAC vs ferric) settled by parallel-train pilot trial on the actual feed.
All five product families.
Hub PageOn-site treatment trials at design-relevant scale.
Read MoreLong-baseline programme-grade research stations.
Read MoreThe likely product family selected after the assessment.
Read MoreISO-container variants.
Read MoreSkid architecture for hard-to-reach sites.
Read MoreFEED, EPC delivery using assessment-station data.
Read MoreValidate aeration design using assessment-station kinetic data.
Read MoreTell us the source, the design question, and the campaign duration — we will scope and estimate within two weeks.
Our expertise spans multiple industries with sector-specific water treatment solutions.