Veolia helps Jaguar Land Rover achieve a perfect finish

Veolia Water Technologies (Veolia) has supplied a deionised water system to Jaguar Land Rover’s Halewood factory. The new, bespoke engineered system, which can deliver up to 90m³/h of deionised water, replaces the 40 year-old ion exchange plant at Halewood which was reaching the end of its life.

To ensure a perfect bodywork finish on all Land Rover models, high purity deionised water (conductivity <0.5µS/cm) is used at all stages of painting from phosphating through to final electro-coating. Average water consumption is almost 30m³/h then, when baths are being dumped and re-filled, this can increase by a factor of three for short periods.

Veolia’s project management team reviewed the existing plant and concluded that the raw water, degassed water and treated water tanks, along with the effluent neutralisation system, could be retained and designed a bespoke ion exchange plant, based around a standard triplex Rapide Strata 45+ with HiPol polishing, to produce deionised water of conductivity 0.1µS/cm. The skid-mounted plant, together with its dedicated control panel, featuring a Siemens graphic display and Ethernet interface to Jaguar Land Rover’s network, was installed in a new plant room. This provided business continuity by allowing the existing plant to continue in operation until the Strata 45+ system had been commissioned, ensuring that there was no interruption to the deionised water supply and keeping the paint line running.

Veolia’s well-proven Strata+ uses the latest short-cycle, counterflow regeneration technology with layered beds. This design improves chemical usage efficiencies and reduces waste water, achieving long-term cost savings and helping to reduce Jaguar Land Rover’s water footprint.