A Study for Developing the Thermal Dehydrator

A generation rate of sludge in Korea had increased dramatically about 200 % for a decade. A requirement for high efficiency dewatering system being possible to produce the low water content cake have suggested due to the appearanceof commercial and social problems about handing of dewatered cake. The conventional dewatering system with mechanical compression device was not suitable to produce the low water content cake and didn'tcope with lots of requirements. Therefore, this paper was to develop the high efficient filter press with the compressive and heating forces through the heating plate to be built between membrane filter plates. It is possible to produce the low water content cake and improve the dewatering rate, so this equipment positively coped with several types of problems related to the sludge dewatering. The plate heated by heat transfer materials such as steam, hot water and thermo-oil made the sludge make the residual moisture within the cake to discharge easilyand to improve the dewatering efficiency of equipment. The pilot scale experiment with 500㎏ of cake production showed that the dewatering efficiency determined by the final water content and dewatering velocity was improved 30% more than the conventional dewatering equipment.