St. Georgen relies on mobile pond sludge dewatering from Amodes

The Klosterweiher in St. Georgen in the Black Forest is a natural water with 27,000 square meters of water surface. In summer, the natural swimming pool is a meeting place for young and old.  Over the years, sludge has accumulated in the settling basin of the monastery pond, which is now being removed in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner using a special technique.

The St. Georgen municipal council commissioned the specialist Amodes, based in Frankfurt am Main, to do the job. The latest system from Amodes offers a solution developed specifically for this purpose, which impresses with its small footprint, low operating costs and high throughput. “Amodes is a young company that has made it its goal to make water bodies usable again in an environmentally friendly way and in harmony with people and nature,” says Amodes Managing Director Carsten Dam. With the combined expertise of its partners in the SÜLZLE Group and Blasius Schuster KG, the company offers mobile, sustainable and technically innovative solutions for effectively removing sludge from bodies of water in an environmentally friendly manner.

Around 2,500 cubic meters of sediment are removed from the Klosterweiher sedimentation basin by the mobile sludge dewatering system. For this reason, a small suction dredger, which is connected to the mobile system via hoses, has been operating on the water body since November. This continuously removes the sedimented sludge and conveys it via the integrated pump to the mobile sludge dewatering plant. Here, the sludge passes through three separation stages. In the first separation stage, larger foreign matter (2.5 mm) is separated. The second removes heavy components, such as sand. In the third stage, polymeric flocculants are used to separate the sludge from the clear water phase.

In the end, this should turn the wet sludge at the bottom of the settling tank into about 500 cubic meters of transportable dry sludge. “This has to be specially disposed of because it is contaminated material. The water, on the other hand, can be discharged directly to the wastewater treatment plant: This is completely free of pollutants,” reports Mario Graupe, who is supervising the project on site as site manager at Amodes. The plant will run between eight and ten hours a day – within around four weeks, the sedimentation basin should then be desludged, Graupe says. These weeks will be decisive for the St. Georgen monastery pond. If Amodes’ method proves successful, it could be applied to the entire lake next year.