Geotextile Tubes
Our dewatering geotextile tubes and bags, FABRICTUBE™ and FABRICBAG™ effectively separate solids from sludge or slurry while efficiently releasing water.
FABRICTUBE™ geotextile tubes are an extremely popular way to dewater dredged and pumped slurries worldwide and can handle relatively high flows of material when compared to most mechanical dewatering methods.
FABRICTUBE™ products are offered in a variety of thicknesses to trap sludge and dewater your job site effectively.
Moreover, FABRICTUBE™ products are fabricated from high-strength woven polypropylene geotextile material.
The precise material for erosion protection, filtration, drainage & separation.
In addition, FABRICTUBE™ geotextile material is resistant to ultraviolet degradation.
FABRICTUBE™ remains stable in chemical and biological environments naturally occurring in soil.
FABRICTUBE™ is specifically designed for sediments, sludges, sands, fly ash, and can be used structurally in coastal and riverine applications.
Incorporating polymers or biopolymers in your project drastically increases the flow rate of the material being cleared.
Below is an explanation of the common process while using FABRICTUBE™.
First, the pipeline is injected at various distances away from the geotextile tubes depending on material and flows, creating an effluent mixture.
Next, the effluent created from the polymer slurry mix is either pumped or gravity-fed away from the dewatering site.
Finally, the effluent is caught within FABRICTUBE™ while the water is allowed to pass through.
Our geotextile bags come in a variety of micron fabric options.
Applications Include:
- Environmental Dredging
- Coastal Protection
- Industrial Wastewater Processing
- Mining and Mineral Processing
- Municipal Applications
- Lake & Pond Dredging
- Agriculture
- Food Processing Waste
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Geotextile tubes can be a very good alternative to belt presses, centrifuges, screw presses, and other mechanical dewatering devices.
Geotextile tubes can be used in a variety of applications and are filled with many types of equipment. The material within the tube is contained and can be left for a very long time and will normally continue to reduce in volume.
The two main categories of Geotextile tubes are structural and dewatering.
The structural usage of geotextile tubes aims to deter erosion from happening on shorelines and protect what lies behind it.
An example of this would be ocean-coastal shorelines that take a beating on a daily basis and if you add in hurricanes, other storms, and high winds, you have a shoreline that starts breaking down and crumbling into the water.
If Geotextile tubes are used in the correct manner and in the right way, you can prevent this erosion from happening and save expensive properties. Using an engineer that understands the water patterns of a certain area is crucial for designing these projects.
There are several important factors that go into the dewatering project design. There will be other items that need to be addressed but these will give you some things to be thinking about as you move forward with your design and permitting:
- How much water you will need to hold back?
- What is the water flow?
- Is there debris that will be pounding the tubes?
- What material will fill the tubes?
- What is the best equipment to use?
- Is this a permanent or temporary project?
- What size tubes will be used?
- What will the configuration be?
- Will the project need scour protection?
- Do I need a top cover?
- What will the cost be?
Dewatering is also a very beneficial use of geotextile tubes. There are many varieties of sludges, sediments, sands, clays, and other pumpable wastes that can be dewatered using geotextile tubes.
One very popular dewatering method is hydraulically dredging a lake, river, pond, or ocean sediment. The sediment is pumped to the geotextile tubes for dewatering, drying, and either hauling or leaving in place.
Whether the dredge material is contaminated or not a polymer is used to pull solids together in the pipeline and create heavy clumps that drop out of suspension in the geotextile tube and allows the water to passively escape the top and sides of the tube.
Most jurisdictions in the US will have water quality standards that will need to be met in order to discharge back into a body of water. This can be obtained by pumping the correct percent solids for the polymer to work optimally and give you the cleanest possible discharge water. Some other standards to be met might also be nutrient and metal removal as well as forever chemicals and others.
We can help with this as we have products to meet the environmental regulations you run into.
Another very common system is pumping sludges from municipalities, food processors, pulp and paper, power plants, mines, agriculture, and other industrial sludges right into tubes using a hydraulic dredge or other pumping methods.