Boral Maldon Operations

Dam water was blocking manual strainers across Boral's Maldon cement works, and staff were cleaning the screens by hand. An FW200 automatic filter on the supply line ended that job.

Boral's Maldon Operations near Picton, NSW, take in a cement works, a concrete batching plant and a rail terminal. Together they supply construction materials across the Sydney metropolitan region.

Water drawn from the main dam carried sand, grit, organic material, pipe scale and suspended solids into the cement works.

Those contaminants blocked up the manual strainers throughout the plant, and staff had to pull the screens and clean them by hand. It was recurring work that took people away from higher-value tasks.

Whatever replaced that arrangement had to run continuously with minimal operator intervention, and it had to hold flow while it cleaned — a cement works cannot stop for a filter.

A Filtaworx FW200 Automatic Self-Cleaning Screen Filter, installed on the process water supply line from the main dam.

The filter cleans itself on differential pressure without interrupting flow, so the plant keeps its water through the backwash cycle. Sand, grit, scale and organics are removed before they reach the strainers and the equipment those strainers were protecting.