Krüger's Clarification System Offers Flexible Water Treatment Solutions

Lucas Magrini, Regional Product Manager for Krüger, Inc., discusses the benefits of using the ACTIFLO® clarification process for drinking water treatment.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: Give us a 10,000 foot view of Krüger. What do you do, and how do you serve your market?

Lucas: Krüger is about 20 years old in the U.S. and over 100 years old in the European market. We bring innovative technology to the market. That is our statement and our goal. We don’t do what everyone else does.

We do the things that we do better than anyone else. Innovative small footprint, cost-effective, energy efficient and the carbon footprint is small. We are an environmental company so that is what we try to do. We want to make sure that we are bringing something to the environment that benefits it and doesn’t take it away.

Water Online Radio: ACTIFLO®. Give us the lowdown on that one.

Lucas: ACTIFLO® is high rate sand ballasted clarification. It is the highest rate clarifier on the market. We design 32 GPM per square foot. Everyone else is a lot lower than that. We use sand as a baluster as a weight. The sand is a nucleus, and we just build a flock around it with polymer and coagulate. That weighs it down so that it can settle out very rapidly.

That is how we can shrink our footprint really small. We do it for both water and wastewater. I think it is the coolest thing in geology that I have ever seen. When you see it live, it looks like marbling under the water.

It is crystal clear on the clarifier side. I am impressed. I impress easily but I think that it’s a really cool small footprint technology. It does a lot not only with water but with wastewater too.

We have been bringing it to the market since the late ‘90s. The first ever ACTIFLO® system is in Golden, Colorado.

Water Online Radio: I’ll be darned. Lucas we are just two radio guys. Go deeper on the benefits. I understand the notion of cleaning water but go deeper on the real benefits and what does the end user really get out of this?

Lucas: The end user gets a lot of flexibility. The ACTIFLO® was designed for flashing water. The inflow of water can go from 10 or 22 or even up to 1,000, and that is a big deal.

They have to try to make sure that is not coming out of their backend-their affluent. With the sand, the polymer, and the coagulant we can take those monster spikes up and down and our affluent won’t change for turbidity, for THS, or for algae.

There are a couple of ways to clean algae in the market. You either float it or you can sink it. We sink it. We use it as sand and we get upwards of 90% removal of algae. There is natural organic matter, NOM, which is part of the DBP’s or disinfection by-product rules. TOC or total organic carbon we want to try to get that out of the water and get it as low as we can so that when it goes into the distribution centers, the higher the DBP’s going to rise.

The lower you get it out the further that you can pump it. That is what we do. We try to get it as low as we can for the municipality so that when they do test it they are not going to break any types of reg’s. That is the benefit of ACTIFLO®. It can be turned on and off relatively quickly. It is a 15 minute retention time.

Mountain-they have been doing it since ‘97 or ‘98. They turn it on in the morning, and depending upon what time of the year it is, they will run it between 8-16 hours. They will turn it off and the next day they will turn it back on, run it for the same, and turn it back off.

Not many other plants can do that because it is such a large flow and it takes time-hours. For the ACTIFLO®, it is a lot faster. It is almost instantaneous.

Water Online Radio: Where can people get a demonstration of ACTIFLO®?

Lucas: We have these small test tube kinds of things that we could do in front of you. Like I said we have a pilot unit that is probably the coolest thing. It is a full-scale unit shrunken down to fit into the back of an eighteen-wheeler. It does upwards of 220-330 GPM in this small little trailer. We have our coagulant feed and our polymer feed and everything in it. That is the coolest way to see it. I hope to be piloting here in the next couple of months in the state.

Water Online Radio: I don’t want to let you get away without talking at least a little bit about your package plans and package filters.

Lucas: Not a problem. We do package plans. They are fully constructed tanks. We can do it in stainless if you want. That gets expensive. They are usually made in carbon steel and run from small quarter MGD all the way up to eight MGD units. We can do eight on a system that can fit on the back of a flatbed truck.

We manufacture them as well. We deliver them fully assembled and ready to go. As long as they put it on a nice strong pad, they have the piping and power we can be in operation in a matter of days. We go out there and start it up. We give the plant operations a bit of schooling on how to operate it and then we keep in touch with them for a little while.

We tell them to give us a call if they have any questions and we will come out. If you need a tweak, we will come out. A lot of times we just tell them have fun with it, tweak it, it is going to be your system. You should learn how to go from top to bottom on it.

If things do change then you can change it on your own. It takes a little bit of time to learn. Our packaged units are pretty cool because the pilot unit is a small package unit. To see how compact it is and how much water it can produce is outrageous…

Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.