Effective stormwater treatment with static lamellae and tubes – no external energy

The Challenge

Dis­charges from com­bined and sep­a­rate sys­tems are high­ly charged with sol­id con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and con­tribute to the pol­lu­tion of receiv­ing waters. The solids them­selves act as trans­porters of a diver­si­ty of fur­ther pol­lu­tants such as heavy met­als, PAH, petro­le­um-derived hydro­car­bons or endocrine dis­rupters. In par­tic­u­lar, fine par­tic­u­lates and organ­ic solids with their high absorp­tive capac­i­ty are well-suit­ed to bind pollutants.

Against this back­ground, the reten­tion of fine par­tic­u­lates has become an impor­tant goal in mod­ern stormwa­ter treat­ment. The cumu­la­tive para­me­ter “fine fil­ter­able sub­stances” (‹ 63 µ) will most cer­tain­ly replace fine frac­tions of solids as the indica­tive para­me­ter for future emis­sion require­ments. The elim­i­na­tion of fine par­tic­u­lates is a chal­lenge for stormwa­ter plants and only pos­si­ble with the deploy­ment of ade­quate fil­ter sys­tems or opti­mised sed­i­men­ta­tion plants. For oper­a­tional rea­sons and owing to its spe­cif­ic space require­ments, the sed­i­men­ta­tion process has become the norm with­in the frame­work of stan­dard treat­ment. How­ev­er, a par­a­digm shift can be observed in stormwa­ter treat­ment towards local­ly adapt­ed “stormwa­ter man­age­ment con­cepts”. This approach calls for an inno­v­a­tive, prac­ti­ca­ble and flex­i­ble treat­ment mod­el as exem­pli­fied by the HydroM.E.S.I.^® Par­ti­cle Sep­a­ra­tor.

The Solution

The HydroM.E.S.I.^® is a flex­i­ble sys­tem, extend­able by mod­ules, for the high-per­for­mance sep­a­ra­tion of par­tic­u­lates by sed­i­men­ta­tion from com­bined and sur­face water dis­charges. The HydroM.E.S.I.^® par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor type STATIC is equal­ly suit­ed for the new con­cep­tion or retro­fitting of cen­tral sed­i­men­ta­tion plants or for instal­la­tion in a decen­tralised treat­ment system.

The per­for­mance of the HydroM.E.S.I.^® par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor type STATIC is mea­sured in rela­tion to spe­cif­ic local require­ments. It is installed in a con­crete or plas­tic struc­ture and con­sists of fixed, diag­o­nal­ly-inclined lamel­la bun­dles with a hon­ey­comb struc­ture. The process of sol­id sed­i­men­ta­tion takes place inside the lamel­la under a favourable upwards flow. The par­ti­cles set­tle on the lamel­la sur­face and fall down­wards to the water and par­tic­u­late mix­ture to the bot­tom of the tank struc­ture. The geo­met­ri­cal design of the sep­a­ra­tor pro­vides a large set­tling sur­face which reduces the treat­ment system’s load sig­nif­i­cant­ly whilst at the same time boost­ing its performance.

In con­trast to con­ven­tion­al designs, the instal­la­tion of a HydroM.E.S.I.^® par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor in a new­ly planned stormwa­ter basin will reduce the basin vol­ume and save on invest­ment costs.

(Annu­al aver­age reten­tion of fine fil­ter­able sub­stances up to approx. 70% and up to 53% of these sub­stances ‹ 63 µ)

The stan­dard lamel­la hon­ey­comb bun­dles for the HydroM.E.S.I.^® par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor type STATIC are man­u­fac­tured from polypropy­lene (PP). Stain­less steel is avail­able on demand. An option­al fil­tra­tion can be sup­plied for spe­cif­ic oper­a­tions to increase the aver­age annu­al reten­tion rate to approx. 90% of fine fil­ter­able sub­stances (approx. 80% of these sub­stances ‹ 63 µ)¹.

The Advantages:

• low invest­ment costs
• for deploy­ment in cen­tral and decen­tralised stormwa­ter plants
• large pro­ject­ed set­tling sur­face with­in a small place
• flex­i­ble, mod­u­lar extend­able sys­tem – by order in stain­less steel 
• no exter­nal ener­gy required
• flow-opti­mised com­po­nents, low loss of height
• sys­tem design by Stein­hardt engi­neers with years of
  expertise

1 Source: Final report 02/2017, HA Project no. 453/14–13 „On-site mea­sure­ment pro­gramme for a semi-cen­tralised plant for treat­ing high­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed road runoff“, Frank­furt Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, Research Group Urban Water and Hydro­me­chan­ics, Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Antje Welk­er, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Carsten Dierkes