Digester cleaning services for municipal wastewater plants

Pumped down, pressed on your pad, and cleaned by hand from the inside. Mobilizing from Somerset, Pennsylvania to treatment plants nationwide.

Vessels
Anaerobic digesters, primary and secondary
Entry
Confined space, OSHA 10 certified crews
Typical duration
Median 43 days on site
Disposal
Sealed roll-offs, hauled on our own trucks

An anaerobic digester loses capacity quietly.

Grit settles on the floor, rags wrap around draft tubes and mixers, and scum and struvite build on the walls. Every foot of that material is volume you built and paid for that is no longer doing any digesting.

The symptoms show up downstream first. Detention time drops, volatile solids reduction slips, gas production falls off, and mixing gets less effective. By the time an operator sees it in the numbers, the buildup has usually been growing for years.

Mobile Solids Solutions cleans anaerobic digesters end to end, with our own equipment and our own crews. We pump the vessel down, dewater the contents on your site, and then send certified crews inside to clean the floor, walls, and internal structures by hand.

From the cover
Everything below this hatch has to come out, and then somebody has to go in after it.

A vacuum truck can lower the level. It cannot reach the floor.

Pump-out
Full cleanout
The contents

Level drops. Whatever the hose cannot lift stays where it is.

Full pump-down into our mixing tanks, on our pumps and our schedule.

The floor and internals

Grit banked on the floor and rag wrapped on the draft tubes are untouched.

Certified crews enter and clean grit, rag and scale by hand.
What leaves the plant

Slurry. Water you already treated, hauled at volume.

Cake. Pressed on your pad before anything moves.
Your next interval

Comes around sooner — the leftovers seed the next accumulation.

Set by your process, not by what the last contractor left behind.

Our digester cleaning process, start to finish.

Setup and air test

We stage the equipment, run gas monitoring on the vessel, and test air quality. Nothing connects until the readings are clean.

Pump the vessel down

Contents move into our mixing tanks on our pumps and our schedule. There is no rental to wait on.

Polymer and flocculation

Polymer is added so the solids separate from the water and the press has something to work with.

Belt press separation

Our mobile belt press pulls water out on site. What leaves the plant is cake, not slurry.

Crews go inside

Once the vessel is empty and the atmosphere is cleared, certified crews enter and clean grit, rag and scale by hand. This is the step most contractors subcontract or skip.

Tear-down

Solids are hauled and disposed of in sealed roll-offs, equipment comes off the pad, and the site goes back the way we found it.

Step 05
Inside the vessel. Monitored atmosphere, certified crews, working the floor and walls by hand.

Confined-space entry is the part that decides your next interval.

A digester is a permit-required confined space under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.146. It can hold hydrogen sulfide, methane, and oxygen-deficient air long after it has been drawn down. Entry takes atmospheric monitoring, ventilation, an attendant, and a rescue plan every time.

Our crews are OSHA 10 certified and work year-round. We plan entry with your operator before the job is scheduled, not on the morning we arrive. Once inside, the crew works the places that decide how long the vessel stays clean: the floor where grit banks, the draft tubes where rag wraps, and the walls where scale builds.

Before entry
Spread staged and connected. Nothing goes inside until the atmosphere reads clean.

Dewatering on site lowers the hauling and disposal bill.

Digester contents are mostly water. Hauling them wet means paying to truck water you already treated, then paying again by the ton to dispose of it.

We bring our mobile belt press to your pad and dewater before anything leaves. The water returns to your process and the solids leave as cake in sealed containers. That means fewer loads out the gate and a disposal invoice based on what is actually waste.

On the pad
The press fed from our own mixing tanks. Water returns to your process; solids leave as cake.

Equipment we own and bring to your plant.

On the trucks for this job

Mixing tanks and polymer feed, the mobile belt press, pumps and fittings sized for full drawdown, crane and roll-off trucks, sealed containers, and our own generators. We run on power we brought, so there is no tie-in to your plant service and no waiting on an electrician.

Owning the equipment is what lets us commit to a date. There is no third-party dispatcher between you and the job.

What we hire for.

Scheduling and budget

Most digester cleanouts are scheduled months ahead and budgeted as capital or maintenance work. A plant running one digester needs more planning than one running two, because solids handling has to go somewhere while the vessel is down. We walk through that with your operator and your consulting engineer before anything is booked.

Writing a spec or a bid package

We will send equipment dimensions, staging and access requirements, process detail, and references with no sales call attached. Our 0.78 EMR sits under the common 1.0 bid threshold, and our office can supply insurance certificates, W-9s, and bid documents.

Where we clean digesters

Our yard is in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and our equipment travels on our own trucks. We regularly work for municipal authorities and boroughs across Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh and Johnstown to Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and throughout Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York.

And beyond it

We have completed jobs in 19 states, from Minneapolis to Miami and Houston to the New Hampshire line. Distance changes the schedule, not the scope. See where we work.

What operators ask us first.

How often should an anaerobic digester be cleaned?

It depends on grit removal upstream, mixing, and loading. Many municipal plants clean every 5 to 10 years. Falling gas production, reduced volatile solids destruction, or a shrinking working volume are signs it is due.

Do you enter the digester or just pump it out?

We enter it. After pump-down and atmospheric testing, certified crews clean the floor, walls, and internal structures by hand. Pumping alone leaves the grit and rag that shorten your next interval.

How long will our digester be out of service?

Across the digester cleanouts in our job record the median is around 43 days on site, with smaller vessels finishing in under two weeks and multi-digester plants running considerably longer. Send us diameter, depth, grit buildup and time since the last cleaning and we will give you a window before you commit.

Do we have to take the whole plant offline?

No. We work one vessel at a time and plan around your process with your operator.

Who handles hauling and disposal?

We do, in sealed roll-offs on our own trucks. The disposal site is agreed with you in advance so it fits your permit and your state’s residuals rules.

Can you work to our state DEP and permit requirements?

Yes. Residuals rules vary by state, and we build your permit conditions into the scope before the job starts.

Do you clean digesters outside Pennsylvania?

Yes. We are based in Somerset, PA and have worked in 19 states. Send us the vessel type and volume and we will tell you honestly whether the mobilization makes sense.

How much does digester cleaning cost?

Price depends on vessel size, volume of solids, access, and disposal distance. Quotes are free. Send dimensions, rough volume, and time since the last cleanout and we will return scope, a window, and a price.

Other services.

Clarifier

Clarifier Cleaning

Primary and secondary clarifiers, timed around your collector maintenance.

Dewatering

Mobile Belt Press Dewatering

The press on your pad. Cake out instead of slurry, on fewer loads.

Emergency

Emergency Solids Removal

When a vessel fails and it will not wait for a bid cycle.

Tell us the vessel. We'll tell you the number.

Dimensions, rough volume, and how long since the last cleanout. That’s enough for us to come back with scope, a window and a price.