Kirk delivering results on Lee Tunnel project

Kirk Environmental, part of Kirk Group, has successfully designed, supplied, installed, relocated and dismantled a total of fourteen Glass-Fused-To-Steel Tanks to MVB-JV as part of the £600M Lee Tunnel project.

The aim of the project was to carry storm water flows from Abbey Mills to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works (STW) in London.

The tanks provided were required to offer critical storage of large volumes of Bentonite Slurry which was used to lubricate the head of the 120m long ‘slurry closed face’ tunnel boring machine during its long 7km journey underneath the city.

Each tank was specified to hold 1,300 tonnes of the slurry mixture, which has a density of 1,400kg/m3, and one of the critical performance criteria for the tanks was the ability to be dismantled and rebuilt at a different location in a very short period of time in order to move the Bentonite Slurry capacity along the route of the tunnel as the process progressed.

The Permastore glass-fused-to-steel tank system was an ideal solution for the Lee Tunnel project, combining the benefits of a modular steel tank, high quality factory applied coating and the flexibility of a site bolted solution that could easily be relocated within a number of days.

Initially only five tanks were constructed at the Beckton site with another nine tanks constructed a few months later in the project. The initial five tanks where than relocated to the Abbey Mill site. Once the tunnelling process was complete the tanks were dismantled and removed from site completely by Kirk's in-house site teams.

Early involvement in the Lee Tunnel Project meant that Kirk was able to work closely with the client, reviewing the project requirements and providing recommendations on the most suitable combination of products, materials and configuration, thus maximising operational performance of the project whilst keeping capital costs to a minimum. The overall project was delivered to a very tight timescale and was managed by the in–house, engineering, project management and construction resources at Kirk Environmental in partnership with the team at MVB-JV and Thames Water.