Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing dams, dikes, and other controls for streams and shorelines; and recovering valuable mineral deposits or marine life having commercial value. In all but a few situations the excavation is undertaken by a specialist floating plant, known as a dredger.
Usually the main objectives of dredging is to recover material of value, or to create a greater depth of water. [1] Dredging systems can either be shore-based, brought to a location based on barges, or built into purpose-built vessels.
Dredging can have environmental impacts: it can disturb marine sediments, leading to both short- and long-term water pollution, damage or destroy seabed ecosystems, and can release legacy human-sourced toxins captured in the sediment. These environmental impacts can reduce marine wildlife populations in some cases, contaminate sources of drinking water and interrupt economic activities such as fishing.
Dredging is excavation carried out underwater or partially underwater, in shallow waters or ocean waters. It keeps waterways and ports navigable, and assists coastal protection, land reclamation and coastal redevelopment, by gathering up bottom sediments and transporting it elsewhere. Dredging can be done to recover materials of commercial value; these may be high value minerals or sediments such as sand and gravel that are used by the construction industry. [2]
Dredging is a four-part process: loosening the material, bringing the material to the surface (together extraction), transportation and disposal. [1]
The extract can be disposed of locally or transported by barge or in a liquid suspension in pipelines. Disposal can be to infill sites, or the material can be used constructively to replenish eroded sand that has been lost to coastal erosion, or constructively create sea-walls, building land [1] or whole new landforms such as viable islands in coral atolls. [3]
Ancient authors refer to harbour dredging. The seven arms of the Nile were channelled and wharfs built at the time of the pyramids (4000 BC), there was extensive harbour building in the eastern Mediterranean from 1000 BC and the disturbed sediment layers gives evidence of dredging. At Marseille, dredging phases are recorded from the third century BC onwards, the most extensive during the first century AD. The remains of three dredging boats have been unearthed; they were abandoned at the bottom of the harbour during the first and second centuries AD. [4]
The Banu Musa brothers during the Muslim Golden Age in while working at the Bayt-Al-Hikmah (house of wisdom) in Baghdad, designed an original invention in their book named ‘Book of Ingenious Devices’, a grab machine that does not appear in any earlier Greek works. The grab they described was used to extract objects from underwater, and recover objects from the beds of streams. [5]
During the renaissance Leonardo da Vinci drew a design for a drag dredger.
Dredging machines have been used during the construction of the Suez Canal from the late 1800s to present day expansions and maintenance. [6] The completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, the most expensive U.S. engineering project at the time, relied extensively on dredging. [7]
These operate by sucking through a long tube like some vacuum cleaners but on a larger scale.
A plain suction dredger has no tool at the end of the suction pipe to disturb the material.
A trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) trails its suction pipe when working. The pipe, which is fitted with a dredge drag head, loads the dredge spoil into one or more hoppers in the vessel. When the hoppers are full, the TSHD sails to a disposal area and either dumps the material through doors in the hull or pumps the material out of the hoppers. Some dredges also self-offload using drag buckets and conveyors.[ citation needed ]
As of 2008 [update] the largest trailing suction hopper dredgers in the world were Jan De Nul's Cristobal Colon (launched 4 July 2008 [11] ) and her sister ship Leiv Eriksson (launched 4 September 2009 [12] ). Main design specifications for the Cristobal Colon and the Leiv Eriksson are: 46,000 cubic metre hopper and a design dredging depth of 155 m. [13] Next largest is HAM 318 (Van Oord) with its 37,293 cubic metre hopper and a maximum dredging depth of 101 m.
A cutter-suction dredger's (CSD) suction tube has a cutting mechanism at the suction inlet. The cutting mechanism loosens the bed material and transports it to the suction mouth. The dredged material is usually sucked up by a wear-resistant centrifugal pump and discharged either through a pipe line or to a barge. Cutter-suction dredgers are most often used in geological areas consisting of hard surface materials (for example gravel deposits or surface bedrock) where a standard suction dredger would be ineffective. They can, if sufficiently powerful, be used instead of underwater blasting. [14]
As of 2024, the most powerful cutter-suction dredger in the world is DEME's Spartacus, which entered service in 2021. [15]
The auger dredge system functions like a cutter suction dredger, but the cutting tool is a rotating Archimedean screw set at right angles to the suction pipe. Mud Cat invented the auger dredge in the 1970s. [16]
These use the Venturi effect of a concentrated high-speed stream of water to pull the nearby water, together with bed material, into a pipe.
An airlift is a type of small suction dredge. It is sometimes used like other dredges. At other times, an airlift is handheld underwater by a diver. [17] It works by blowing air into the pipe, and that air, being lighter than water, rises inside the pipe, dragging water with it.
Some bucket dredgers and grab dredgers are powerful enough to rip out coral to make a shipping channel through coral reefs. [18]
A bucket dredger is equipped with a bucket dredge, which is a device that picks up sediment by mechanical means, often with many circulating buckets attached to a wheel or chain. [18]
A grab dredger picks up seabed material with a clam shell bucket, which hangs from an onboard crane or a crane barge, or is carried by a hydraulic arm, or is mounted like on a dragline. This technique is often used in excavation of bay mud. Most of these dredges are crane barges with spuds, steel piles that can be lowered and raised to position the dredge. [18]
A backhoe/dipper dredger has a backhoe like on some excavators. A crude but usable backhoe dredger can be made by mounting a land-type backhoe excavator on a pontoon. The six largest backhoe dredgers in the world are currently the Vitruvius, the Mimar Sinan, Postnik Yakovlev (Jan De Nul), the Samson (DEME), the Simson and the Goliath (Van Oord).[ citation needed ] They featured barge-mounted excavators. Small backhoe dredgers can be track-mounted and work from the bank of ditches. A backhoe dredger is equipped with a half-open shell. The shell is filled moving towards the machine. Usually dredged material is loaded in barges. This machine is mainly used in harbours and other shallow water. [18]
Excavator dredge attachments
The excavator dredge attachment uses the characteristics of cutter-suction dredgers, consisting of cutter heads and a suction pump for transferring material. These hydraulic attachments mount onto the boom arm of an excavator allowing an operator to maneuver the attachment along the shoreline and in shallow water for dredging.
This is a bar or blade which is pulled over the seabed behind any suitable ship or boat. It has an effect similar to that of a bulldozer on land. The chain-operated steam dredger Bertha , built in 1844 to a design by Brunel and as of 2009 [update] was the oldest operational steam vessel in Britain, was of this type. [19]
This is an early type of dredger which was formerly used in shallow water in the Netherlands. It was a flat-bottomed boat with spikes sticking out of its bottom. As tide current pulled the boat, the spikes scraped seabed material loose, and the tide current washed the material away, hopefully to deeper water. Krabbelaar is the Dutch word for "scratcher". [20]
A water injection dredger uses a small jet to inject water under low pressure (to prevent the sediment from exploding into the surrounding waters) into the seabed to bring the sediment in suspension, which then becomes a turbidity current, which flows away down slope, is moved by a second burst of water from the WID or is carried away in natural currents. Water injection results in a lot of sediment in the water which makes measurement with most hydrographic equipment (for instance: singlebeam echosounders) difficult.
These dredgers use a chamber with inlets, out of which the water is pumped with the inlets closed. It is usually suspended from a crane on land or from a small pontoon or barge. Its effectiveness depends on depth pressure.[ citation needed ]
A snagboat is designed to remove big debris such as dead trees and parts of trees from North America waterways.[ citation needed ]
Some of these are any of the above types of dredger, which can operate normally, or by extending legs, also known as spuds, so it stands on the seabed with its hull out of the water. Some forms can go on land.
Some of these are land-type backhoe excavators whose wheels are on long hinged legs so it can drive into shallow water and keep its cab out of water. Some of these may not have a floatable hull and, if so, cannot work in deep water. Oliver Evans (1755–1819) in 1804 invented the Oruktor Amphibolos, an amphibious dredger which was America's first steam-powered road vehicle. [21]
These are usually used to recover useful materials from the seabed. Many of them travel on continuous track. A unique variant [22] is intended to walk on legs on the seabed. [23]
Fishing dredges are used to collect various species of clams, scallops, oysters or mussels from the seabed. Some dredges are also designed to catch crabs, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and conch. These dredges have the form of a scoop made of chain mesh, and are towed by a fishing boat. Clam-specific dredges can utilize hydraulic injection to target deeper into the sand. [24] Dredging can be destructive to the seabed and some scallop dredging has been replaced by collecting via scuba diving. [25]
As of June 2018, the largest dredger in Asia is MV Tian Kun Hao, a 140-metre (460 ft) long dredger constructed in China, with a capacity of 6,000 cubic metres per hour (59,000 cu ft/ks). [26] An even larger dredger, retired in 1980, was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Essayons, which was 525.17 feet (160.07 m) long. [27] The Mallard II, a clamshell dredger that maintains levees in San Francisco Bay, has operated continuously since being built in 1936. [28] [29] : 61
Dredgers are often equipped with dredge monitoring software to help the dredge operator position the dredger and monitor the current dredge level. The monitoring software often uses Real Time Kinematic satellite navigation to accurately record where the machine has been operating and to what depth the machine has dredged to.[ citation needed ]
In a "hopper dredger", the dredged materials end up in a large onboard hold called a "hopper." A suction hopper dredger is usually used for maintenance dredging. A hopper dredge usually has doors in its bottom to empty the dredged materials, but some dredges empty their hoppers by splitting the two-halves of their hulls on large hydraulic hinges. Either way, as the vessel dredges, excess water in the dredged materials is spilled off as the heavier solids settle to the bottom of the hopper. This excess water is returned to the sea to reduce weight and increase the amount of solid material (or slurry) that can be carried in one load. When the hopper is filled with slurry, the dredger stops dredging and goes to a dump site and empties its hopper.[ citation needed ]
Some hopper dredges are designed so they can also be emptied from above using pumps if dump sites are unavailable or if the dredge material is contaminated. Sometimes the slurry of dredgings and water is pumped straight into pipes which deposit it on nearby land. These pipes are also commonly known as dredge hoses, too. There are a few different types of dredge hoses that differ in terms of working pressure, float-ability, armored or not etc. Suction hoses, discharge armored hoses and self-floating hoses are some of the popular types engineered for transporting and discharging dredge materials. [30] Some even had the pipes or hoses customised to exact dredging needs etc. Other times, it is pumped into barges (also called scows), which deposit it elsewhere while the dredge continues its work.[ citation needed ]
A number of vessels, notably in the UK and NW Europe de-water the hopper to dry the cargo to enable it to be discharged onto a quayside 'dry'. This is achieved principally using self discharge bucket wheel, drag scraper or excavator via conveyor systems.[ citation needed ]
When contaminated (toxic) sediments are to be removed, or large volume inland disposal sites are unavailable, dredge slurries are reduced to dry solids via a process known as dewatering. Current dewatering techniques employ either centrifuges, geotube containers, large textile based filters or polymer flocculant/congealant based apparatus.[ citation needed ]
In many projects, slurry dewatering is performed in large inland settling pits, although this is becoming less and less common as mechanical dewatering techniques continue to improve.[ citation needed ]
Similarly, many groups (most notable in east Asia) are performing research towards utilizing dewatered sediments for the production of concretes and construction block, although the high organic content (in many cases) of this material is a hindrance toward such ends.[ citation needed ]
The proper management of contaminated sediments is a modern-day issue of significant concern. Because of a variety of maintenance activities, thousands of tonnes of contaminated sediment are dredged worldwide from commercial ports and other aquatic areas at high level of industrialization. Dredged material can be reused after appropriate decontamination. A variety of processes has been proposed and tested at different scales of application (technologies for environmental remediation). Once decontaminated, the material could well suit the building industry, or could be used for beach nourishment. [31]
The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(January 2023) |
Dredging can disturb aquatic ecosystems, often with adverse impacts. [32] [33] In addition, dredge spoils may contain toxic chemicals that may have an adverse effect on the disposal area; furthermore, the process of dredging often dislodges chemicals residing in benthic substrates and injects them into the water column.[ citation needed ]
Dredging can have numerous significant impacts on the environment, including the following:
The nature of dredging operations and possible environmental impacts requires that the activity often be closely regulated and requires comprehensive regional environmental impact assessments alongside continuous monitoring. [36] For example, in the U.S., the Clean Water Act requires that any discharge of dredged or fill materials into "waters of the United States," including wetlands, is forbidden unless authorized by a permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. [41] Due to potential environmental impacts, dredging is often restricted to licensed areas, with vessel activity monitored closely using automatic GPS systems. [36]
According to a Rabobank outlook report in 2013, the largest dredging companies in the world are in order of size, based on dredging sales in 2012 [2]
Notable dredging companies in North America
Notable dredging companies in South Asia
A backhoe loader, also called a loader backhoe, loader excavator, tractor excavator, digger or colloquially shortened to backhoe within the industry, is a heavy equipment vehicle that consists of a tractor-like unit fitted with a loader-style shovel/bucket on the front and a backhoe on the back. Due to its (relatively) small size and versatility, backhoe loaders are very common in urban engineering and small construction projects as well as developing countries. This type of machine is similar to and derived from what is now known as a TLB (Tractor-Loader-Backhoe), which is to say, an agricultural tractor fitted with a front loader and rear backhoe attachment.
A hose is a flexible hollow tube designed to carry fluids from one location to another. Hoses are also sometimes called pipes, or more generally tubing. The shape of a hose is usually cylindrical.
A dry bulk cargo barge is a barge designed to carry freight such as coal, ores, grain, sand or gravel, or similar materials. Barges are usually constructed of steel. They have an outer hull, and one or more internal holds. A rake barge has a bow shaped to cause less resistance when being pushed and is usually placed at the head of the tow. A box barge has no rake to the ends and is usually placed in the center and rear of the tow and can hold more cargo.
Siltation is water pollution caused by particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments and to the increased accumulation of fine sediments on bottoms where they are undesirable. Siltation is most often caused by soil erosion or sediment spill.
A hopper barge is a type of barge commonly designed to transport commodities like coal, steel, rocks, sand, soil and waste. 'Hopper barge' can also refer to a barge that dumps cargo at sea. These are now commonly called 'split hopper barge', because they split along the length of the hull. Split hopper barges can be non-propelled or self-propelled.
Rainbowing is the process in which a dredging ship propels sand that has been claimed from the ocean floor in a high arc to a particular location. This is used for multiple purposes, ranging from building up a beach to prevent erosion to constructing new islands. The name is derived from the appearance of the arc, which closely resembles a brown-colored rainbow.
Queen of the Netherlands is a Dutch trailing suction hopper dredger ship constructed in 1998. After lengthening in 2009, she was the largest and most powerful dredger in the world. The vessel has been used in high-profile salvage and dredging operations including the investigation into the Swissair Flight 111 crash and in the Port Phillip Channel Deepening Project. It has been called "the world's largest floating vacuum cleaner".
A bucket is a specialized container attached to a machine, as compared to a bucket adapted for manual use by a human being. It is a bulk material handling component.
A vacuum truck, vacuum tanker, vactor truck, vactor, vac-con truck, vac-con is a tank truck that has a pump and a tank. The pump is designed to pneumatically suck liquids, sludges, slurries, or the like from a location into the tank of the truck. The objective is to enable transport of the liquid material via road to another location. Vacuum trucks transport the collected material to a treatment or disposal site, for example a sewage treatment plant.
Jan De Nul Group is a Belgian family-owned company, with the financial headquarters in Luxembourg, that provides services relating to the construction and maintenance of maritime infrastructure on an international basis. Its main focus is dredging, which accounts for 85% of its turnover. Other areas include civil engineering and environmental technology.
The TSHD Shoalway is a trailing suction hopper dredger, owned and operated by Royal Boskalis Westminster, originally intended for the British market and built in 2010.
Dredging, Environmental and Marine Engineering NV (DEME) is an international group of specialised companies in the fields of capital and maintenance dredging, land reclamation, port infrastructure development, offshore related services for the oil & gas industry, offshore windfarm installation, and environmental remediation. The group is based in Zwijndrecht, Belgium, and has current operations on five continents.
A dredge drag head is used by a trailing suction hopper dredger to collect sand from the sea floor.
A trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) is a type of ship capable of maintaining navigable waterways, deepening the maritime canals that are threatened to become silted, constructing new land elsewhere or replacing sand eroded by storms or wave action on the beaches. This is made possible by large, powerful pumps and engines able to suck sand, clay, silt and gravel.
Dredge turning gland is a trailing suction hopper dredger component.
The dredge valve is a component of a Cutter Suction Dredge or a Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger that is used control the flow of water and sand in the suction and discharge pipes of one of these types of dredgers.
A dredge plume is a cloud of debris that forms as a result of dredging. Such plumes usually begin either at the bottom where the dredging takes place, or at the surface from either overflow from the dredging equipment or dumping of the dredged material in a different location.
An amphibious excavator is a type of excavator that can perform dredging while afloat on soft terrain such as swamp, wet land, and shallow water. An amphibious excavator is better adapted for removing silty clay, clearing silted trenches, swampland operation, and shallow water operation than traditional barge-mounted dredgers.
The TSHD Sospan Dau is a Dutch trailing suction hopper dredger owned by Sosban BV. The vessel has worked on dredging projects, including offshore aggregates, port maintenance, land reclamation, coastal defense and beach replenishment. The name Sospan Dau is Welsh and originates from Sosban Fach and Llanelli's tin plating industry, Sospan being the Welsh for Saucepan and Dau being Welsh for Two as the ship is a successor to the original Sospan.
The first exclusively owned dredger ship of its type in the Indian Navy; the indigenously built ship is meant for dredging the various navy ports. The ship was designed to meet precise deepening requirements around the dockyard and port installations and in riverine or other places where deepening is needed. The ship which can hold up to 300 cubic metres or 500 tons of dredged material, has a set of 8 openable hopper bottom doors for disposal of dredged material out at sea. The main equipment of the ship is a 320-HP Cummins-855-powered forward-mounted crane supplied by Titagarth Wagons. The crane’s 15.2-meter boom has a working radius of 12 meters and hoisting capacity of 10.5 metric tons at a 46-degree boom angle. The crane’s grab bucket has 3-cubic-meter capacity and holds up to 4.5 metric tons of dredged material; and is capable of dredging up to depths of 10 meters.
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