Street Sweeping

Our street sweeping plant was introduced in January 2015 with great success.

The materials collected from gully and street sweeping wastes are processed to generate water, compost and washed sand.

Our Process

The system we are using is a CDEnviro gully waste and road sweeping recycling plant.

The recycling process is as follows:

1. The material is loaded in using the weighbridge operating system.

2. The street sweeping or gully waste is tipped in a concrete bay on site. Any drilling waste is unloaded into a tank where it is held and fed into the process daily.

3. A loading shovel loads the material into the machines hopper.

4. From the hopper, it travels up a conveyor belt to the log washer.

5. In the washer, the material is washed. Organics float off and the aggregate fraction is removed. Aggregates include, washed grit and 2 grades of stone.

6. The organic fraction is taken from the bay and put into windrows where it is composted and sent to restoration.

7. The water from the log washer is pumped into a tank where polymers are added to the process.

8. The polymers cause the solids to float off and are pumped out as sewage cake - this is added to the CLO for land restoration projects.

9. The water is then turned through a centrifuge and recycled through the process.

End Results

From inputs of street sweepings and gully waste we are able to get a washed sand and aggregate fraction which are both suitable for re-use. This normally accounts for 75% of the material.

There is also organic and light weight material which is dewatered and then composted. Sadly once composted this material can only be classed as a CLO (compost like output) so is only suitable on restoration projects. Organic content normally accounts for 20% of the material.

The remaining 5% of material is a flocculated sludge which is dewatered. The water is recovered and reused and the remaining sludge has to go to landfill.

Additional Info

Whilst in the planning stages, we looked at several machines and these plants really were the best of the bunch! With the added advantage that the Environment Agency liked the process, we were happy with the end outputs.