St. Petersburg sludge incinerator contract awarded

St. Petersburg's water and wastewater utility, SUE Vodokonal, awarded a contract to the UK consultancy Mott MacDonald to supervise the provision of wastewater sludge incineration facilities for its northern wastewater treatment plant that serves 1.6 million people.

The new facilities will reduce sludge quantities disposed into landfills, and are being designed to generate electricity and supply district heating by using waste heat. Two fluidised bed incinerators will be developed under the €41 million-first stage of the design-build contract. Each incinerator will be capable of incinerating 61 tonnes of sludge and dry solids per day.

The incineration process won't require additional fuel as the existing sludge thickening and dewatering process will be upgraded so that dry solids content of the sludge entering the incinerators is not less than 25% weight. The hot flue gases will be used to raise steam so that waste heat from incinerators can be used to generate up to 3MW of electricity and to provide heat for a district heating system. The project will be completed and commissioned in October 2006.