Piedroba Marine Construction (PMC) today announced Luis Prieto-Portar, PhD, PE, PMC’s Principle and Chief Executive Officer, will be presenting at the 16th Annual Florida Remediation Conference on Friday, October 15, 2010 in Orlando. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. (ET).
Dr. Prieto-Portar will be discussing emerging technologies and their application to clean surface waters during the course of maintenance dredging of Florida waterways. The maintenance of over 11,000 miles of rivers and waterways in Florida normally involves the dual tasks of dredging and disposal of the removed sediments. These sensitive environments merit adding a third task: cleansing the surface water and removal of contaminant solids. These solids include the recovery of clean sands, removal of heavy metals, rubbish and other contaminants.
New techniques are converting dredging into a bioremediation strategy. A case study of some of these new techniques is presented through the dredging of eight canals of the city of Holmes Beach in Manatee County during the summer of 2009. Although not required by the city, the contractor included the third task of cleansing the surface water and extracting solids from the dredged 6,890 yd3 via a total cleansing system. The system consists of a portable three-stage cleaning process, that cyclones and sieves the influent. Each stage separates increasing finer solids down to particles 37 microns in size. Ninety-five percent of the solids were clean quartz sand, useful for local fills. The effluent was practically clean, with turbidities commonly 25 NTU below baseline. In the few sections that yielded higher turbidities, the effluent was directed to containers where the solids were recovered through flocculants. The paper discusses the use of a compact swinging-ladder dredge, GPS-based software to optimize the dredged profile, solids recovery systems and the flocculation of fines.
About Piedroba Marine Construction:
Piedroba Marine Construction (PMC) is a self-certified small business and woman-owned marine contractor based in South Florida. PMC offers comprehensive construction and environmental engineering services including marine construction, and dredging throughout the Southeastern United States.
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Source: Piedroba Marine Construction: 29 September 2010.