Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 604693
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/604693
Dalmarnock Sewage Treatment Works was Scotland’s first large scale sewage treatment works which, from 1904 with the Dalmuir Works to the west, greatly improved public health in the city. Dalmarnock Works was constructed from 1893–94 to the design of Danish engineer, G. Alsing, an acknowledged authority on chemical precipitation. The treatment then, and still does, involve separating out the solid component of the sewage effluent in settlement tanks in the form of sludge. This was then de-watered in a filter press. Three years later a Cumnor drying plant was installed to produce sludge cake which was marketed as ‘Globe Fertilizer’ for agricultural use. By 1911 32 000 tons per annum were being sold, but it was never possible to utilise the
entire production and, from 1915, the surplus sludge was pumped into a purpose-built boat and taken daily down the Clyde and discharged in the Firth off Garroch Head, Isle of Bute.
Research into the use of more efficient biological filtration occurred from 1913 with the inauguration of two
hectares of filter beds. By the mid-1930s the works were reaching the end of their useful life and, in 1937, an experimental plant using the Simplex Activated Sludge Process was installed, but it was not until 1962–68 that a full activated sludge plant was constructed at a cost of about £4 m. The consulting engineers for this improvement were Babtie, Shaw & Morton.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
