French Agency to help build sludge treatment unit in Alexandria

CAIRO – 26 October 2017: A simplified form of an agreement is approved between Egypt and the French Development Agency (AFD) on a project aiming to build a sludge treatment unit at the East Alexandria wastewater treatment plant.

Egypt's official gazette published the Presidential Decree No. 247 for 2017 announcing this project.

The decree states that the French Agency will provide a credit facility total amounting to €50 million ($59 million), signed in Cairo last March and approved by the Parliament in July 2017. This type of unit would be the first in Egypt outside Cairo and could act as a catalyst by encouraging the government to create similar units nationwide, according to AFD.

Alexandria has several wastewater treatment plants, the largest of which is the East Alexandria wastewater treatment plant. The sludge produced by this plant is subjected to a dewatering process without treatment by transporting the sludge to the landfill called “9N”, located in Nagaa Abou Bessissa in southwest Alexandria.

However, many residents in this area have always complained of the nuisances it causes (odors, insects, and snakes). Consequently, with no alternative solution, this plant needs to be transported to a site even further away.

The project aims to build a unit to treat sludge through anaerobic digestion (also known as methanization) at the East Alexandria wastewater treatment plant.

The project will have a number of positive impacts, including reducing the quantity of sludge produced and the magnitude of electricity generation given the biogas produced by the sludge treatment and creation of market outlets for the sludge produced by selling it as fertilizer to farmers.