KSB – pumping from the depths: Europe’s deepest waste water pumping station in St. Petersburg

The metropolis of St. Petersburg with its almost 5 million inhabitants is located directly on the Baltic Sea coast at the mouth of the river Newa. The aim of this ambitious project was to ensure that all waste water being discharged into the Baltic Sea is first processed in a waste water treatment plant. In achieving this goal, the city of St. Petersburg was also seeking to fulfil the demanding requirements of Helcom – an intergovernmental commission of countries on the Baltic Sea – and make an effective contribution to keeping the Baltic Sea clean.

The St. Petersburg waste water pumping station was planned as the centrepiece of a twelve kilometre-long tunnel system designed to transport millions of litres of waste water to a waste water treatment plant.

This project featured specific challenges in two distinct areas:

On a technical level: the construction of a waste water pumping station in a shaft structure capable of lifting the waste water of a metropolis of millions from a depth of 92 metres so that it could flow to the waste water treatment plant via a tunnel system.

And in terms of logistics, the customer decided to opt for a solution “from a single source”. As well as supplying the submersible motor pumps, drives and frequency inverters, KSB thus had to also provide all downstream services including supervision for the waste water disposal project. Hydraulic planning and engineering services including sophisticated physical model testing were also part of the comprehensive package provided by KSB.

A total of 19 robust pumps from the tried-and-tested Amarex KRT waste water range including control systems and frequency inverters are now in use for waste water disposal in St. Petersburg. KSB individually tailored the waste water pumps’ hydraulic systems to the special requirements of the pumping station. The pumps driven by dry-installed submersible motors with a power rating of 700 kW each transfer the waste water from a depth of 92 metres into a tunnel system – from here it flows by gravity into the waste water treatment plant.

With this waste water treatment project, KSB has made a substantial contribution to ensuring that today up to 98 percent of the waste water generated by the St. Petersburg’s millions of inhabitants can be fully treated.

The waste water project was developed on the basis of close cooperation between Russia and Finland. The Finnish state was involved from the outset and played a key role in the project’s funding. Furthermore, KSB used Finnish expertise for the control systems. The waste water pumping station was completed and handed over in 2013, the International Year of Water Cooperation. The aim of this special year was to raise awareness of the challenges of the water industry and the rising demand for water as a valuable resource. The operators of the plant also wanted to encourage people to become more conscious about how they use water.

Location: St. Petersburg, Russia

Application: Waste water treatment

Year: 2013

19 Amarex KRT waste water pumps, 700 kW