A new 2,000 m³ digestion tank was built, among others, on the site. Sludge can be now treated with higher efficiency and other options exist for reuse of such sludge.

Ostrava, 21 March 2017. The important investment project that started in November 2015 and ended in February 2017 increased capacity of the overloaded sludge system. The wastewater treatment plant is now ready to receive wastewater to be discharged by new food processing plants in the region.

The system uses thermophil anaerobic stabilisation where sludge in the digestion tank is heated up to 55 C. Once undesired substances are removed (and health standards are complied with), more biogas can be produced. The wastewater treatment plant in Ostrava will rank among few plants in the Czech Republic that use this advanced technology.
Commissioning of the new technology has started recently and is in progress.

Thanks to compliance with health standards, the sludge, which is produced in each wastewater treatment plant will have better parameters and it will be possible to use it as substrate for reclamation of land.

Liquid sludge is pumped in the wastewater treatment process into digestion tanks where it is heated up in order to produce biogas. The biogas is supplied to a gas holder and burnt in cogeneration units where electricity and heat are produced. The energy is used then in the wastewater treatment or for heating our buildings", says Jan Tlolka, Director of Sewage Systems in SmVaK.
Regarding the consumption of electricity, the wastewater treatment plant in Opava was self sufficient almost at 2/3. SmVaK Ostrava operates 11 cogeneration units in its wastewater treatment plants – the cogeneration units in Opava, Frýdek-Místek and Karviná are the best-performing ones.

The investment in the wastewater treatment plant in Opava consisted of two basic parts. Because the capacity of the old digestion tanks was too low, it was necessary to invest CZK 40 million and build a new 2000 m³ digestion tank. In old digestions tanks the sludge was kept for a very short time - its stabilisation was not sufficient and health standards were not complied with.

 The original tanks were reconstructed and now they are used together with the new one. The total volume is 4,600 m³.
Reconstruction of gas pipelines and installation of technologies in the digestion tanks cost approximately ten million.

“The motto of this year World Water Day is wastewater. The fact that SmVak Ostrava has been paying a particular attention to discharge and treatment of wastewater and focuses also on the operated infrastructure is that almost CZK 3.7 billion were  invested between 2000 and 2016 into sewage systems and wastewater treatment plants”,  says Anatol Pšenička, Managing Director of SmVaK.