CHICAGO (Sept. 1, 2013) – The world’s municipal wastewater plant operators will spend $1.2 billion in 2014 for equipment to separate particles from the sewage inflows. This is the most recent forecast in Sedimentation/Centrifugation World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company.
Municipal Wastewater Sedimentation/Centrifugation Revenues ($ Millions)Nearly half the purchases will be made in East Asia. In just a few decades, China has invested as much in treatment hardware as the U.S. has in the last fifty years. Consequently, the U.S. has some 110 year old plants where 90 percent of the Chinese plans are less than twenty years old.
Centrifuges are competing with belt filter presses for sewage sludge dewatering applications. Clarifiers and thickeners are widely used for separation processes. There is relatively little use of hydrocyclones and automatic backwash filters which are common sedimentation devices used in other industries. Dissolved air flotation is used in some plants but not all.