Two HUBER lighthouse projects of the fourth treatment stage: construction of the micropollutant removal plants in Bickenbach and Uhldingen is progressing rapidly

How can a fourth treatment stage be optimally integrated or retrofitted, taking into account all individual requirements and boundary conditions? This is a question that many municipalities, operators and wastewater associations will soon be asking themselves. In Bickenbach (Hesse) and Uhldingen (Baden-Württemberg), they are already one step ahead. Those responsible there have already taken action and assumed an important pioneering role with the start of large-scale implementation.

In Bickenbach, the official groundbreaking ceremony for what will probably be Hesse's first fourth treatment stage took place in spring 2022. The future plant will consist of an ozonation unit with a downstream four-line adsorption stage and an upstream two-line cloth filtration system. Sixteen HUBER Activated Carbon Filter CONTIFLOW® GAK and two HUBER Pile Cloth Media Filter RotaFilt® units will be used for primary treatment of the wastewater. The ozone reactor will be equipped with the proven HUBER Pressure-Tight Door TT7 and two high-quality HUBER Manhole Covers SD5.

Commissioning of the plant is scheduled for spring 2024. Thus, the Bickenbach WWTP will make an important contribution to the protection of the Hessian Marsh, which is the largest groundwater reservoir in Germany and provides drinking water for about two million people in the Rhine-Main area.

The combination of ozonation and activated carbon filtration is also applied at the Uhldingen-Mühlhofen wastewater treatment plant – on a technical scale as large as never before installed in Baden-Württemberg. HUBER supplies the activated carbon stage with a total of 24 HUBER Activated Carbon Filter CONTIFLOW® GAK for biological post-filtration and adsorption.

The installation of the activated carbon filters was successfully completed this summer. Commissioning of the 7.4 million euro project is planned for 2023. Then, persistent and hazardous trace substances such as pharmaceutical residues, hormones and flame retardants will be reliably separated before they enter Lake Überlingen. This part of Lake Constance supplies around four million people in large parts of Baden-Württemberg with about 135 million m³ of drinking water annually.