Building A Better (Aeration) Mousetrap
Jim Lauria, the Vice President of Sales and Marketing with Mazzei Injector Company, joined Water Online radio to discuss unconventional water sources, and what his company is doing to draw water from different sources.
One area that they have seen applications for is treating wastewater lagoons. One of the benefits of this water is that it already has nutrients and biosolids. On the other hand, lagoons can also be problem areas. They have potential to cause surface and ground water contamination if they go septic because of anaerobic activity, noxious odors, green house gases, even a small aspect of breeding ground for mosquitoes. “Basically, we’re looking at how can we take this water, treat it properly and then use it back in,” Lauria said.
Lauria believes aeration is really the way to go to avoid these problems. However, that comes with a few issues of it’s own, the least of which is that aeration is intrinsically energy intensive. “Right now a lot of people are using these surface aerators they are just whipping up the foam and there are dead spots and all kinds of things that we really feel aren’t being treated.” This is in addition to maintenance and safety issues with each individual aerator floating on top of a lagoon. The solution? Build the better mousetrap.
“We really feel that by doing some computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and analysis we’ve come up with a way to use our injectors and our nozzles so that we can make it into a whole system approach using pumping and the motive force of water to bring in air and use the the force of the nozzles to inject air down at the bottom underneath the surface and actually mix it and aerate it much better,” Lauria said. “Aeration costs can be cut by motive force of water in [Mazzezi’s] injectors. Their specialty nozzles may be able to cut that aeration cost horse power by a third to maybe even a half.”
Click the radio player below to listen to the full interview to learn more about Mazzezi Injector Company.