2024 | 2025

Münchehofe sewage treatment plant receives new purification stages.

Hoppegarten-Münchehofe

The Münchehofe wastewater treatment plant treats the wastewater of around 300,000 people, half of whom live in the eastern districts of Berlin and half in the Strausberg-Erkner water association area. This makes it the fifth largest of Berlin's six sewage treatment plants.

In 2024, the Münchehofe wastewater treatment plant was equipped with two new purification stages to further improve Berlin's waters. The already completed process water treatment plant significantly reduced the nitrogen content of the treated wastewater. At the same time, work began on the construction of a flocculation filtration system, which aims to remove phosphorus almost completely. The first step was the concreting of the foundation.

Berliner Wasserbetriebe had already biologically removed 95 to 97% of the phosphorus contained in the wastewater in its sewage treatment plants. With the commissioning of the new flocculation filtration system in 2025, this substance, which comes from human excrement and is a nutrient that promotes algae growth in bodies of water, will be reduced by a further 95% through a chemical-mechanical process. This leads to an overall removal rate of up to 99.75%.

New technology improves water quality and safeguards drinking water resources

Berliner Wasserbetriebe has equipped all six sewage treatment plants with at least two additional purification stages. “We have thus invested in improving the quality of the sensitive Spree-Havel river system,” emphasized Frank Bruckmann, CEO of Berliner Wasserbetriebe. The metropolis thus obtained 70 % of its drinking water from bank filtrate, which was obtained from infiltrated river water that was naturally purified on its way downstream.

Proven processes eliminate nutrient residues

The new purification stages of flocculation filtration and process water treatment are aimed at the residues of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus that are not completely eliminated in biological purification. These nutrients are in demand as fertilizers in agriculture, but are undesirable in bodies of water. The biological process water treatment plant was built for the residual nitrogen. In it, so-called planctomycetes metabolize the nitrogen, mainly in the form of ammonium from the dewatering of the sewage sludge, in isolation from other bacteria in the biological treatment stage.

The principle of flocculation filtration to remove phosphorus has been used successfully in Berlin since 1981 and 1985 at the Grunewald chain of lakes and at Lake Tegel: Schlachtensee and Tegeler See are now among the cleanest bodies of water in the region. Wasserbetriebe has now adapted the process to improve the quality of the sewage treatment plants. By adding the flocculant iron(III) chloride, the residual phosphates dissolved in the water precipitated, so that they were retained in filters covered with anthracite and gravel.

Internet: Münchehofe sewage treatment plant