Recycling Municipal Sludge with Portable Dredges

LWT's John Deere-powered Pit Hog™ Model 727 removes sludge at a Tennessee waste water treatment plant

Policing the pit. With today's emphasis on resource recovery, even burdensome and seemingly worthless materials are becoming increasingly valuable.

Take municipal sludge, for example. For sewage treatment facilities wrestling with the problem of sludge disposal, Liquid Waste Technology may have the answer.

The Somerset, Wisconsin, USA company manufactures dredges and lagoon pumping equipment for sludge and sediment removal.

These John Deere diesel or electric powered "Pit Hog™" portable dredges employ a boom-mounted auger/cutterhead and high-volume centrifugal pump. Lowered to the bottom of the pond, the variable-speed auger cuts through the solids bed as the submerged pump swallows up sludge and removes it through floating discharge lines.

From papers mills to packing plants, LWT's dredges are designed for use on a wide range of waste water ponds. But the majority of the time, the Pit Hogs™ are used at municipal waste water treatment plants.

"If it's not hazardous, the waste is frequently reused beneficially as a fertilizer," explains LWT's Don Mueller. "We also manufacture a system for injecting sludge directly into the soil."

To be sure, recycling has become a growth industry as more companies discover new ways to reuse discarded materials.

Source: John Deere POWERSOURCE