Ba Ria - Vung Tau: Resisting flooding with new technology

Vung Tau is the first city in the country to overcome the bad smell from the drainage pits emitted by a new type of odor prevention system. Vung Tau also has a ' robot ' dredging underground sewers that makes the city not flooded.

Install new odor prevention system (Photo: TP)

These two technologies of BR-VT are being purchased by many localities and are 2 of 12 'Vietnamese science and technology innovations ' awarded by Mr. Nguyen Tan Dung at the end of July 2006.

Solve the odor problem in the street

According to BR-VT Urban Bus Management (Busadco), the cause of stinking is the domestic and storm water drainage system circulating in a sewer system. Therefore it is difficult to prevent hazardous waste and gas.

Busadco collective, headed by engineer Hoang Duc Thao, has invested in solving the pollution problem with an application titled: 'Designing and manufacturing odor prevention and rainwater collection system ' in urban areas in BR-VT area.

After a period of trial installation on the routes of Vung Tau City and Ba Ria Town, the new odor prevention system has completely eliminated the smell of manholes. It is known that the cost of the new odor control system is lower than the existing manhole system of about 1.2 million VND, saving for the State budget billions of VND when put into the application.

During the Sea Festival, BR-VT has installed 5,000 new odor prevention systems on the main streets, making people and visitors happy about the coastal city.

Resist flooding with ' robots '

The National Office of Intellectual Property (Ministry of Science and Technology) carried out procedures for intellectual property right certification for scientific works of sewer dredging.

This scientific work together with the new odor control system of Busadco BR-VT won the first and second prizes of Vietnam Science and Technology Innovation Contest.

These two works were also awarded the Youth Innovation Award by the Central Union to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Youth Union.

Vung Tau City has always experienced flooding due to the sewer lines being blocked by garbage and mud. Meanwhile, workers could not get down to deep narrow sewers and 40-50 meters long to dredge.

Engineer Hoang Duc Thao and his colleagues have researched and manufactured " robots " to replace people to do this. It was a winch cluster consisting of two complete winch systems at both ends to control a dredge ball moving along the centerline of the winch, through two 12-mm cables connected to both sides of the sphere.

The principle of operation is that when this winch pulls, the other windlass releases the cable, the ball will run along the drain, pull mud and garbage out of the collecting sewer to the manholes.

Through implementation, dredging with ' robots' is very clean, safe for users, simple and easy to manipulate, labor productivity increases several dozen times, the cost of ' robots ' is cheap hundreds times compared to specialized equipment imported from abroad.

Since the invention of the system of winch dredging (in 2004) up to now, BR-VT has not been flooded.

Currently new odor prevention technology and 'robots ' dredging underground sewers of Busadco BR-VT have been ordered by many localities and included in the textbook of Water Supply and Sewerage Department of the University of Civil Engineering.

Pham Hung