DREDGING AND RECLAMATION

DREDGING

Dredging is the operation of excavating material from a water. It is the process whereby
subaqueous excavations are carried out by plant located above water level

Dredging often is focused on maintaining or increasing the depth of navigation channels,

anchorages, or berthing areas to ensure the safe passage of boats and ships. Vessels require a
certain amount of water in order to float and not touch bottom

REASON FOR DREDGING

a. To lower the bed level to permit the passage of ships

b. To obtain materials for use in land reclamation
c. To obtain aggregates which offer desalination can be used in the manufacture of concrete
d. To obtain materials for use in the construction of roads and other civil engineering
projects
e. To facilitate the construction of civil engineering works
POSSIBLE PURPOSES OF 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;
- Recovering valuable mineral deposits or marine life having commercial value.

Purposes

Capital dredging: dredging carried out to create a new harbor, berth or waterway, or to deepen
existing facilities in order to allow larger ships access. Because capital works usually involve
hard material or high-volume works, the work is usually done using a cutter suction dredge or
large trailing suction hopper dredge; but for rock works, drilling and blasting along with
mechanical excavation may be used.
Land reclamation: dredging to mine sand, clay or rock from the seabed and using it to construct
new land elsewhere. This is typically performed by a cutter-suction dredge or trailing suction
hopper dredge. The material may also be used for flood or erosion control.

Maintenance: dredging to deepen or maintain navigable waterways or channels which are

threatened to become silted with the passage of time, due to sedimented sand and mud, possibly
making them too shallow for navigation. This is often carried out with a trailing suction hopper
dredge. Most dredging is for this purpose, and it may also be done to maintain the holding
capacity of reservoirs or lakes.

Harvesting materials: dredging sediment for elements like gold, diamonds or other valuable
trace substances. Hobbyists examine their dredged matter to pick out items of potential value,
similar to the hobby of metal detecting.

Fishing dredging is a technique for catching certain species of edible clams and crabs. A heavy
rectangular metal scoop is towed astern of a moving boat with a chain bridle attached to a cable.
This drags along the bottom scooping up oysters. It is periodically winched aboard and the catch
is sorted and bagged for shipment.

Preparatory: dredging work and excavation for future bridges, piers or docks or wharves, this is
often to build the foundations.

Winning construction materials: dredging sand and gravels from offshore licensed areas for
use in construction industry, principally for use in concrete. It uses specialized trailing suction
hopper dredgers self-discharging the dry cargo ashore. Land based Old River beddings can be
processed in this manner too.

Contaminant remediation: to reclaim areas affected by chemical spills, storm water surges
(with urban runoff), and other soil contaminations, including silt from sewage sludge and from
decayed matter, like wilted plants. Disposal becomes a proportionally large factor in these
operations.

Flood prevention: dredging increases the channel depth and therefore increase a channel's
capacity for carrying water.
Other

Beach nourishment: this is mining sand offshore and placing on a beach to replace sand eroded
by storms or wave action. This enhances the recreational and protective function of the beach,
which are also eroded by human activity. This is typically performed by a cutter-suction dredge
or trailing suction hopper dredge.

Peat extraction: dredging poles or dredge hauls were used on the back of small boats to
manually dredge the beds of peat-moor waterways. The extracted peat was used as a fuel. This
tradition is now more or less obsolete. The tools are now significantly changed.

Removing rubbish and debris: often done in combination with maintenance dredging, this
process removes non-natural matter from the bottoms of rivers and canals and harbors

Anti-eutrophication: A kind of contaminant remediation, dredging is an expensive option for

the remediation of eutrophied (or de-oxygenated) water bodies; one of the causes is like
mentioned above, sewage sludge.

Seabed mining: is a possible future use, recovering natural metal ore nodules from the sea's
deepest troughs

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE PLANNING OF DREDGING APPARATUS

There are consideration that must be checked to all types of dredging in the consequence of
removing the material. There is little point in dredging for navigable channel at sea if the void so
formed is going to be filled by natural process in a very short time. So the first step must be to
carry out is site investigation and hydrographical survey to see if the project is feasible from
practical, economic and ecological viewpoints

Hydrographical survey will indicate the characteristic of the sea bed and likely movement of
material that will be caused by tides and currents after dredging has taken place. On more
important schemes this will be supplemented by a study of scale models which can reproduce
marine conditions with great accuracy
Having established the feasibility of a project the next stage is to determine the methods of
execution, including the necessary plant requirements. Among the more important factors which
affect this decision are

- Location of site
- Dredging depth
- Type of material to be dredged
- Disposal of material
Location of Site

The selection of plant and equipment will depend to a large extent on the location of the site,
equally the location of the site partially governs the selection of plant and equipment

The dredging of inland waterways such as rivers canals and will normally require small, easily
controllable dredgers such as grabs cutter suction dredgers or small bucket dredgers

It may even be necessary to use a dredger that can be transported overland

Dredging within harbors or with easy distance of the shore will be done with bucket trailing
suction dredgers, either with self-contained hoppers or serviced by fleets of barges with the
necessary tugs etc.

Dredging Depth

Navigational requirements can require dredge depths varying from 2 to 3 m in inland waterways
to about 25m for very large crude oil carriers (500,000 tons) approach channels

Under water pipeline trench excavation will usually require depths within this range also

Depths of up to 60m are being presently achieved by special suction dredgers for land
reclamation with sand eg in Rhine delta areas of Holland

Type of Material

This shows any type of material can be dredged, mud, silt and sand can be removed with buckets
or suction or dam grabs. Harder materials such as clay have to be broken up by buckets or cutter
suction dredgers before they can be removed. Hard rock in some instances can be excavated by
purpose made rock bucket dredgers or broken up using explosives
Disposal of Materials

The vast quantities of materials which are removed during dredging operations have to be
deposited somewhere else. If there is no area suitable for reclamation, or if the material itself is
unsuitable for such use, the cost of disposal can form a major part of the cost of operation. Even
though the volumes extracted during most inland dredging projects are relatively small. It may
still be necessary to use a fleet of Lorries with special water retaining bodies to transport the
material to suitable disposal areas.

Land reclamation- process of creating new land from ocean river beds or lake. The land
reclaimed is known as ground or land fill

DREDGING PLANT

In all but a few situations the excavation is undertaken by a specialist floating plant, known as a
dredger

Dredging plant may be broadly described under two main headings

- Digging dredgers
- Suction dredgers
Digging Dredgers

Bucket dredger is usually a mobile craft with an endless chain of buckets on a ladder similar in
action to a trenching machine. Its ladder can be raised and lowered mechanically to the required
level and the buckets will discharge either direct into a barge or more usually into a hopper
within the craft. The former is preferable as it enables the dredgers to operate without
interruption while dumping takes place

- The max. depth is about 30m and its capacity is fairly low
- It is however easy to control being maneuvered by machines, pulling on side, head and
stern
- Its prime function is river, dock and harbor maintenance
Purpose made bucket dredgers have been constructed to enable rock and other nutls to be
dredged in this way
The dragline dredger operate on the same principle as a land dragline

Its uses are limited to shallow inland waterways where there are low bridges and the material
dredged from the bed can be dumped on the banks

The grab dredger in the simplest form is a crane mounted on a position. This type requires
towing into position and a barge in attendance to receive the grab discharge

Suction Dredgers

This by far the most common type of dredger in use today.

Trailer suction hopper dredgers, comprise a self-propelled hull containing a tank or hopper which
is filled with sand silt or some clay (depending on the drag head used and the hopper design) by
one or two suction pipes which usually trail alongside the vessel with the suction head dragging
along the bed

The dia. Of suction pipes are 400-1300mm with max. Dredging depth of 35m and the hopper
capacity up to 3000m3 up to 10000m3 for deep sea type. The pipes are lowered by crane or which
and a 500mm Q pipes will deliver approx... 650m3 material into the hopper per hour

Cutter suction dredgers are designed to break up and remove firm and more cohesive material
including soft rock. The dredger has a central well which houses a rigid ladder which can be
raised and lowered by means of a crane. The ladder carries a suction pipe and at the end of the
ladder a revolving cutting head teeth which bite into the firm, material

RECLAMATION

Process of creating new land from oceans, seas, river beds/ also known as land fill

Reclamation Plant and Equipment

Transporting Plant

Rail: when materials have to be transported long distances over land

Placing Plant: apart from normal earth moving and compacting plant which will always be
required on a reclamation site, a number of specialized items of equipment which should be
considered

- Belt conveyors
- Cable ways
Both of these have the advantage of continuous operation interrupted only by mechanical
breakdown or extreme weather conditions. There are particularly suitable for reclamation sites
where the ground is unable to support heavy vehicles or where there is little room for
maneuvering dump trucks etc.

The use of cable ways are considered for the dumping of heavy materials into water where the
depth is insufficient for dumping from floating craft and access is not available from the land or
where high water current exist. The closing of the gap between the two arms of the wall is the
most common use of cable ways in reclamation

A typical large scale reclamation project will involve the many factors but the most important of
all will be:

Site established and mobilization in addition to the normal requirements, site established may
involve the following:

- Bringing road and rail access to the site to enable vast quantities of materials to be
transported economically
- The provision of high voltage electricity supply
- The installation of radio and radar communication systems
- The installation of conveyors and cab ways systems if these are required
- The construction of an independent plant yard and offices which may be in use for more
than five years and in remote areas the construction of a labour camp. Mobilization will
often entail the movement of dredgers from various parts of the world, and the timing of
these movements will be crucial to the start of the operation
- Dredging of stock pit, having set up on the site, the first operation will be the construction
of stock pit and any necessary channels. In simple terms this is a pit in sea bed, located
centrally about the area to be reclaimed, in to which the dredgers or burgers dump their
 load. A cutter suction dredger or dredgers, sitting in the middle of the harbor, sucks up
the sand which has been previously dumped and pumps it into final position
- The location and size of the stock pit will depend entirely on individual situations. It
should be as close as possible to minimize the dumping distance and afford protection
from storms, yet this will be balanced to a certain extent by the need to shorten the length
of the approach channel, which might require almost continuous maintenance dredging
- Alternatively, the reclaimed material may be loaded into dump or self-propelled well
barges, which travel to a reclamation dredger which then unloads them and dumps the
material ashore

The location and the size of the stock pit will depend entirely on individual situations

It should be as close as inshore as possible to minimize the dumping distance and afford from
storms, yet this will be balanced to a certain extent by the need to shorten the length of the
approach channel which might require almost continuous maintenance dredging