IKT – Institute for Underground Infrastructure

IKT research project on optimising sewer cleaning

We drive our cars through the car wash only when they’re dirty – and that’s totally logical. But many operators of waste-water systems continue to clean their drains and sewers to a fixed schedule. IKT has conducted a research project into the optimisation potentials of optimising sewer cleaning strategies.

Cleaning of sewers makes an important contribution to assuring the functioning of our drain and sewer systems, and accounts for a significant portion of the responsible municipalities’ budgets. It is often the case, however, that system operators’ resources are not used efficiently and/or that, due to inadequate knowledge of the current condition of the network systems, lengths are cleaned without this really being necessary. Many sectors are not, or only insignificantly, fouled when they are cleaned, for example, whereas other lengths exhibit heavy fouling. It is therefore possible to exploit potentials for optimisation and save costs by introducing an optimised sewer cleaning strategy, without risking impaired operational safety and reliability by universally increasing cleaning intervals.

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