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Understanding Dredging

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Young CEDA's Excursions Inform on Working in the Dredging Industry

Young CEDA is very active this spring to organise activities for young professionals and students and get them interested to work in the dredging industry.

Young CEDA Belgium organised an excursion in the Port of Antwerp. It was a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with the world of dredging.

 Amoras

Inside the Port of Antwerp a wasteland was transformed into Europe's biggest sludge recycle plant: AMORAS (in the picture above: the huge consolidation tanks).

Antwerp welcomes "Ultra Large Container vessels" of up to 15,000TEU such as MV Edith MEARSK and to assure a minimum water depth of 15.20m in the port, a lot of maintenance dredging is required. The environmental departments of Jan de Nul dredging and DEME have found a sustainable solution for the disposal of the dredged sludge. By a mechanical dewatering process and a huge storage capacity under controlled conditions, the sludge can be transformed into ‘filter cakes' which could be used for clay granules, bricks or even road construction.

Young CEDA invited two universities (Gent and Leuven) for a tour around the dewatering plant and a boat trip inside the port to see some dredging equipment as well. Young professionals gave presentations about working in the dredging industry. Over 30 enthusiastic participants, all engineers-to-be, joined us on March 31 2014 for this excursion.

View some photos about this excursion here.