Overview
ARBOK-Port-Sludge-Cleanup turns port-bottom dredging from a perpetual cost into a revenue stream. Bottom sludge is lifted by an airlift system and fed into a vacuum phase-separation unit that recovers every fraction: fresh water, clean sand and clay, organic fuel, technical salt, oil cake, and heavy-metal salts — with no landfill, no re-dumping at sea, no CO₂, and no toxic residue left behind. Today ports pay $50–400/m³ specifically for the toxicity of contaminated sludge; this technology recovers the heavy metals instead of burying them, inverting the economics of the entire dredging cycle.
Applications
Primary use cases: maintenance dredging of harbours and marinas; cleanup of contaminated port sediment (cadmium, lead, mercury, copper, zinc, tin/TBT, PCBs, petroleum); channel deepening with resource recovery.
Industries and users: port authorities, dredging contractors, coastal industry, state infrastructure budgets.
Scale: barge- or shore-mounted modules; from a single unit to multi-module fleets cleaning whole harbour zones.
Operating Principle
Two linked steps. (1) Lifting — Arbok Water Upwelling (AQWU): hoses are lowered to the bottom and the water-sludge mixture rises through the pipe on the airlift principle (hydrostatic imbalance), with no mechanical bottom pumps; the air compressor runs on solar power, so the sludge rises almost for free. (2) Processing — ZWD vacuum phase separation: under deep vacuum only water evaporates, at ambient temperature, without reagents, membranes, or filters; components separate by volatility and density into clean streams, and heavy metals exit as separate salts.
Limitations: throughput tied to module count; sludge composition varies by site; pre-screening of coarse debris may be required.
Key Parameters
Water recovery: up to 99.98 %; ambient temperature; zero liquid discharge.
Module (Arbok-Jumbo configuration): 4 800 t of sludge per day, delivered as a compact, containerized train of vacuum-separation and dry-sludge handling equipment paired with a fresh-water storage tank sized to the module's throughput. Each module keeps a small operating footprint suitable for barge or shore siting, with the working area — including storage — scaling proportionally as modules are added.
Throughput example: one module cleans 1 km² of a 1 m sludge layer (~1 million m³) in ~9 months; 10 modules (48 000 t/day) in ~27 days.
Yields (dense sludge ~1 300 kg/m³, 50 % dry matter):
| Product | per 1 m³ sludge | per 1 km² (1 m layer) | per module/day |
|—|—|—|—|
| Fresh water | ~627 kg (~0.63 m³) | ~627 000 m³ | ~2 300 m³ |
| Sand & clay | ~577 kg | ~577 000 t | ~2 130 t |
| Organics (14 MJ/kg) | ~65 kg (~253 kWh) | ~65 000 t (~0.25 TWh) | ~240 t (~0.93 GWh) |
| Technical salt | ~22.8 kg | ~22 800 t | ~84 t |
| Oil cake | ~6.5 kg | ~6 500 t | ~24 t |
| Heavy-metal salts | ~1.3 kg | ~1 300 t | ~4.8 t |
Architecture and Components
AQWU airlift intake (solar-powered compressor); vacuum phase-separation train (modular containerized units); dry-sludge extractor; pelletizer and big-bag packing; fresh-water storage tank; control system (PLC/automation). No boilers, furnaces, or reagent facilities. Barge- or shore-mounted; modular and scalable by module count.
Advantages
Technical: full fraction recovery in one pass; heavy metals recovered as salts, not buried; no reagents, membranes, or filters; near-zero variable processing cost on a barge (own energy, no consumables).
Economic: converts a $50–400/m³ disposal liability into saleable products (water, sand/clay, fuel organics, salt, oil, metals); avoids landfill rent, fines, and decades-long toxic-ground liability.
Environmental: zero liquid discharge, no sea re-dumping (London Convention / OSPAR / EPA compliant), no CO₂ from the process.
Strategic: restores port draft and capacity; turns a recurring state expense into a self-financing or profitable operation.
Integrations
Barge and shore infrastructure; ship holds for water collection; SCADA/PLC ready; pairs with adjacent ARBOK platforms (Vacuum Cracking, Upwelling, Bunker Cleaning).
Deployment & Operation
Steps: site/sludge survey → module sizing → barge or shore mounting → commissioning. Operating conditions: open-air, ambient temperature, solar-assisted. Operation: continuous, automated, minimal crew (wages and depreciation are the main residual costs).
TRL
Proposed TRL 3 — ⚠ confirm. Evidence available: documented concept and full mass-balance calculation built on the validated ARBOK vacuum-separation platform. Not yet evidenced: a deployed port field unit. Remaining steps to raise TRL: barge prototype, harbour reference site, regulatory acceptance of recovered fractions.
Market Potential
Global dredging market $17–20 billion (2025); port segment ~$3.7 billion, growing to ~$6.3 billion by 2035. Worldwide sediment lifted: >1 billion m³/year (up to 2.4 billion m³ with channel deepening); ~870 harbours under maintenance dredging remove ~560 million m³/year. Country scale: USA ~300 million m³/year, China ~100, France ~50, Morocco >3.4. US Army Corps funds ~95 % of US work; FY2026 budget $10.44 billion.
Typical Project Economics
Conventional cost benchmarks: clean dredging $2–20/m³; confined disposal (CDF) $12–40/m³; contaminated sludge with treatment/disposal $50–400/m³. Per km² (1 m layer): clean $2–20 million, contaminated $50–400 million (e.g., Indiana Harbor — $80 million for 54 000 m³). ARBOK target: variable processing cost near zero on a barge; revenue from recovered fractions can turn the project cash-positive. (Site-specific CAPEX/payback to be modelled per harbour.)
Risk Factors
Concept stage — needs a field reference site; regulatory classification of recovered metals/salts/fuel varies by jurisdiction; conservative dredging industry; offtake markets for recovered fractions must be secured; serial-production partner required.
Related Technologies
ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) · Arbok Upwelling · Arbok-VCBC (Bunker Cleaning) · ARBOK CleanSea