Besides the many trailing suction hopper dredgers already seen on Maasvlakte 2, two cutter suction dredgers are now at work.
These special vessels ‘cut’ the soil under water free with a rotating cutter head, suck it up, and pump it to the right destination via a pipeline (floating as well as over land).
This cutting free is necessary when the soil is well compacted. For the sand that is extracted for Maasvlakte 2 from the sand extraction area in the North Sea, it is not needed. There, the trailing suction hopper dredgers are in their element. In the near future, 530 hectares of port basin must be deepened to about seventeen metres below Normal Amsterdam Water Level (NAP).
Later, the docks will be further deepened to 20 metres below NAP. To achieve this, the cutter suction dredgers will shift around 30 million m3 of spoil from the docks to the future port sites.
[mappress]
August 31, 2010
Source: Maasvlakte 2;