Sludge Dewatering

WaterSolve offers water treatment chemicals, Geotubes®, and feed equipment necessary for most SLUDGE DEWATERING APPLICATIONS. Sludge dewatering is a physical/chemical operation to reduce liquid residuals (i.e., sludge) volumes by up to 90%, converting them into a solid “cake”. Municipal and industrial water and wastewater treatment facilities commonly use mechanical sludge dewatering techniques (e.g., belt-filter press, sieve drum, centrifuge, dissolved air flotation, gravity belt thickeners, etc.) to facilitate the dewatering of their sludge, usually resulting in a substantial net savings in sludge disposal costs. Mechanical sludge dewatering options are available as short-term or long-term remedies but are capital and energy intensive for facilities already operating on a tight budget. In many cases, Geotube? containers are a more cost effective, easy to operate, four season dewatering option for facilities running out of biosolids/sludge storage capacity when land application contractors (if applicable), drying beds, storage lagoons, and tanks are unable to keep up with volume demands.

 

As the properties of liquid sludge vary from industry to industry and facility to facility, different sludge dewatering technologies may be more suitable. In order to increase dewatering efficiency, mechanical dewatering systems normally involve feeding a machine with the liquid sludge that has been dosed with an organic and/or inorganic flocculant and/or coagulant (e.g., polymers, aluminum sulfate, ferrous or ferric salts, etc.). Flocculants and coagulants remove suspended solids (turbidity) from water by causing the suspended particles to aggregate and settle out of water. This technique is used in wastewater treatment, industrial and treated sewage from municipal wastewater treatment plants, alum and lime filter backwash water, dredging and construction residuals, and mining sediments.