By A TERRATEC Micro Tunnel Boring Machine (MTBM) has hit an important milestone in India’s modern sewage tunnel system in the city of Ahmedabad. It is the first time the region has used the procedure of microtunnelling to lay underground trunk lines to transfer waste water.
In the western part of the city of Ahmedabad, the TERRATEC MTBM was chosen by ITD Cementation India Limited to construct a new sewage system. The new drainage scheme in the city fails to keep up with the present demand and suffers from regular flooding.
In the western part of the district, the new trunk line would cover the region from Vadaj Circle to Mahalaxmi Char Rasta, a distance of around 6.5 km. Sewage water will be transferred from existing pipes onto this line and conveyed for treatment to the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) in Vasna. At the end of the scheme, transport capability will also be expanded to 550 million litres of waste water per day.
For DN1400 concrete pipes, this MTBM system has been engineered with the option of a later size increase and update for DN1600 pipes. The MTBM Shields, Main Jacking Stations, Intermediate Jacking Stations, Slurry Transport and Lubrication Systems, Automated Guidance Systems and Control Room are included in TERRATEC’s supply scope. Furthermore, TERRATEC also supported ITD with an on-site service package that included the dispatch of main engineers and MTBM operators.
The project running in the Vadaj area has currently begun and the installation of the trunk-line will take around 2 years. Various diameters of 1400 and 1600mm will be used in the lines.
The devices are composed of cement, hard clay and sand to bore in the Ahmedabad soil. Any state-of-the-art features include a Cone Crusher built into the laser guidance system of the Cutter Head structure and Terratec.
Gulshan Gill, Managing Director of Terratec in India said, “Being the leading TBM supplier to Indian Tunnelling (Metro, Hydro, Sewerage) industry, TERRATEC continues to perform well with another MTBM breakthrough in the country.” He also added, “In the past 10 years, TERRATEC has supplied TBMs, MTBMs, rolling stock systems to contractors in the tunnel construction industry including LNT, TATA, ITD, HCC, J.KUMAR, PATEL, SOMA, GULERMAK and SAMSUNG. As a matter of fact, TERRATEC TBMs has completed over 70 km of the accumulated tunnel in a timely and safe manner.”
