Scottish Water has trialled using an ultra-high-pressure robotic cutter to blast through sewer blockages at twice the speed of sound.
The device was used to clear away decades of industrial deposits that blocked a strategic sewer in South Lanarkshire, which the company had been unable to unclog for years.
A kilometre of trunk sewer had been clogged with concrete-like calcite and suspected hazardous materials from activity on the former industrial land.
Scottish Water had failed to dislodge the blocks with jetting and diamond-tipped milling heads before turning to its supply chain for a novel solution.
“As a project team we rapidly understood that typical methods would not work here and that we needed to be inventive,” said Marc McKinnie, project manager.
“In just three months we have been able to clean the entire kilometre of sewer – something we had been struggling to achieve for several years using conventional methods.”
McKinnie added it was the first time a robotic cutter of its kind has been used in the UK. The device, from German supplier Enviro-Clean, directs narrow, ultra-high-pressure jets of water onto hard deposits to break them down. Debris including potentially hazardous deposits can be flushed out and safely disposed of.
The trial meant Scottish Water avoided having to dig up and replace the length of sewer. It operates in sewers from 10cm to one metre wide and uses CCTV monitoring to ensure precision cutting.