Industrial wastewater sludge dewatering

Are you in the food, paper, or metal processing industry? You are probably also dealing with the issue of cleaning the wastewater that your industrial plant produces. If you treat industrial wastewater in your treatment plant, you can't do without a dewatering machine. Are you looking for one that is efficient, economical, and will pay for its investment in just a few months? The screw press meets these requirements perfectly.

Specifics of industrial wastewater

Wastewater is produced in large quantities by many industries:

Food processing plants - breweries, dairies, cheese factories, wine producers, meat processing plants, rendering plants, fruit and vegetable processors.
Plants that process and recycle used frying oils.
Industrial laundries, car washes.
Metal finishing plants: electroplating plants, galvanizing plants.
Petrochemical industrial plants.
And many more...

The intensity of pollution in industrial wastewater depends on the specific type of industry and the technologies used in production. Industrial wastewater arises from process water that is used directly in production, for example as rinse water. Food processing industries in particular often treat polluted industrial wastewater in the WWTPs that they build in their vicinity.

Dewatering: maximum volume reduction

The sludge that industrial plants produce is divided into:

primary sludge, which comes directly from the process (for example, the sediment from the rinse water mentioned above),
secondary sludge, which comes from the treatment plant itself.

Dewatering is about removing as much excess water from the sludge as possible and obtaining a final material (cake) with the highest possible dry matter ratio and the lowest possible volume. The more you dewater the sludge, the higher the solids content of the final product, the greater the volume reduction from the original liquid state, and the more money and effort you save on material removal.

With a dewatering screw press, you can fundamentally change the water volume of the sludge. For instance, if you increase dryness by dewatering from the original 2% in the liquid stage to 15% cake, you will reduce volume by 87%. The result? You pay for the removal of just a tenth of the original sludge.

The screw press drains efficiently and economically

What should you keep in mind when looking for a suitable wastewater treatment plant? It's definitely energy consumption. Unlike other dewatering equipment, the screw press has a significant advantage here: it is energy-efficient, up to ten times more so than, for example, a centrifuge. And if you consider the current energy market situation, this is doubly true.

Centrifuge or screw press? We've drawn up the detailed comparison.

But the results of sludge dewatering do not depend on the principle on which the equipment works. What matters is the stability and quality of the sludge. Industrial wastewater in particular often has specific requirements: dewatering "complicated" sludge from dairies, for example, which contains a high proportion of fat, or sludge saturated with chemicals, can be more challenging, regardless of the equipment used. The dewatering result is also influenced by the polymer, which is mixed with the sludge in the flocc tank.

Durable thanks to the wolfram carbide

In some industrial applications, dewatering plants have to cope with more aggressive sludges than those generated in wastewater treatment plants that process domestic wastewater. Wastewater from the petrochemical or metal finishing industries contains abrasive particles that can damage the dewatering system. Therefore, we have treated internal parts in our screw press with abrasion-resistant wolfram carbide.

Trouble-free maintenance

If you have a well-trained operator who follows the prescribed work procedures and does not neglect routine daily maintenance, we can describe the screw press as essentially maintenance-free. Screw presses can handle up to ten years of operation (about 12 to 15 thousand operating hours) without the need for major repairs. During preventive overhauls, it is not difficult to replace individual components on-site. Minor simple repairs or replacements of operating parts can be carried out according to the instructions even by WWTPs operators.

The screw press fits anywhere

The screw press (compared to other dewatering "dinosaurs") is a compact device that can be conveniently placed even in the limited space of smaller industrial plants. You can install it anywhere that the surrounding conditions allow. Noise and vibration are almost negligible with this device, ranging from around 60 to 70 dB.

We have been manufacturing our screw press since 2014 and supply it mainly to smaller and medium-sized municipal plants around the world.

Back to news