Vehicle Wash Water Reclaim Units, Partial or Full Reclaim System

There are a number of different variations and configurations of vehicle washing equipment, these include standard ‘roll over’ washers and conveyor washers for cars and larger scale washers for haulage and public transport vehicles. The most popular vehicle wash equipment is that used in ‘roll over’ car washes. In a typical vehicle washing facility, wash water is collected in traps underground before being discharged to drain. The main principal behind vehicle wash water recycling systems is the re-use of this wash water either in part (partial) or in full (total) following treatment.

From the gully in the wash bay, dirty wash water flows into a below-ground three chamber sump tank, where heavy solids and sludge settle out and floating debris is prevented from flowing through the sump by an internal baffle arrangement. From the final chamber the wash water is pumped through the reclaim unit (which removes particles down to a size of 15-20 microns) before being discharged into a ‘clean’ wash tank.

In a partial reclaim system, the ‘clean’ wash tank has two sections – one for washing and one rinsing. The rinse tank is fed from the mains water feed via a ball cock. Wash water is then drawn from the ‘clean’ wash tank for the washing process and from the rinse tank for the rinsing process via a moving gantry.

In a full reclaim system, a proportion of the ‘clean’ wash water is pumped through a second treatment stage within the reclamation unit to remove smaller particles before discharge into the rinse tank. The rinse tank is fitted with a mains water top-up ball cock to replace any losses in the system.

Partial reclaim equipment is cheaper than full reclaim units, as there are fewer treatment stages and as such, partial reclaim units are more common. Typically up to 65% of the wash water used in the process can be recovered and reused in a washing facility with a partial reclaim unit. Full reclaim units enable the reuse up to 95% of the water run off, the 5 % loss is accredited to water being blown away during the process or driven away on the vehicle.