Digested Sewage Sludge is dewatered before final disposal. The residual sludge from digestion tanks has solids no use which contains 70% water content. Although the sludge still feels like solid, but its volume needs to be removed before final disposal.
Different Methods For Dewatering
Open Sand Beds: The digested wastewater sludge is spread over an open bed of sand where its water content is evaporated via sunlight and rest water is drained with a piping system underneath the sand bed. Six weeks of drying reduced the water part to 40%. This method is widely adopted in small rural waste plants.
Flocculent Chemical Dosing: Other Drying methods such as Rotary Drum Vacuum Filter, Centrifugation and Belt Filter process requires chemical conditioned sludge where a dosing pump transfer flocculants into sludge produced from digestion tanks and screw pump transfer it to the dewatering unit.
Rotary Drum Vacuum Filter: A submerged drum rotates in wastewater sludge & its each revolution consists of sludge drying, cake formation and cake disposal. The vacuum is applied by means of liquid ring vacuum pump and it draws liquid via filter medium on the drum surface which retains the solids. The vacuum continues to remove moisture from the cake and the resultant cake is deposed from drum to conveyor belt.
Belt Filter Press: The chemical condition sludge is conveyed along the belt and plough rolls to drain water out. Guide plates are used to position the sludge onto the middle of the belt so that squeezing does not take place outside the filter. After this stage, the solids are prepared to enter into the pressure zone, where the sludge is sandwiched between two belt filters and medium to high pressure is applied resulting in more drainage of water. The resulting water is again transferred to the starting of the primary treatment unit of wastewater plant and sludge cake is disposed.
Centrifugation Process: In the process, sludge is transferred into a centrifuge where its internal drum rotates at a high speed of 3000rpm or more. The feeding rate is kept constant and the solids with the size of 2 µm and above gets deposited on drum inner wall in the form of stable sludge with 20% water content and the hydraulic energy in the drum allows a collecting pipe to collect clean water and transport it to collecting tank without any pump.
We provide initial training services during product installation to acquaint your team with your pump and its operations.