The wastewater treatment facility of Drachten is treating sewage of approx. 100,000 citizens of the City of Drachten and surrounding conurbations. In the Netherlands disposal of sludge to agricultural land is strictly prohibited and therefore sludges are incinerated at a high cost. Together with energy costs, sludge disposal is responsible for the majority of costs of treating municipal sewage.

The existing sludge treatment facilities at the Drachten WWTP require optimisation to enable all sludges to be digested prior to disposal. Eliquo will install a new sludge thickening facility, upgrade the existing digesters and install a new high efficiency CHP unit. This will produce, approx. 1.1 Million kWh of electricity, sufficient for more than 50% of the plants own energy consumption whilst resulting in 25% less sludge disposal.

As a result of the competitive tender procedure, Eliquo was selected having offered additional benefits to the Waterboard’s specified requirements, all within the frame of the limited budget. Eliquo offered substantial additional savings on the present operational costs. The Friesian Waterboard, Wetterskip Fryslân, and ELIQUO recently signed a contract of 1.75 Million Euro.

The Dutch Company Eliquo Water & Energy is focusing on transforming wastewater treatment plants into energy self-sufficient facilities whilst producing valuable nutrient resources such as phosphorus rich fertilisers. Eliquo is currently commissioning the conversion and optimisation of the Amersfoort WWTP project, where LYSOTHERM® thermal pressure hydrolysis together with Pearl® nutrient recovery technology producing a Crystal Green® fertiliser has been installed.