Faced with rising operational costs due to increasing energy and chemical prices, as well as stricter effluent permit limits, many operators and engineers are turning to performance optimizers and controls automation to enhance treatment processes and reduce operating costs while limiting capital expenses.
A leading fruit juice company had expanded over the past ten years and increased wastewater flow from 7,000 to 11,000 gallons per day (gpd), without upgrading its wastewater treatment plant. Read the full case study to learn how after a Mazzei AirJection system was installed, dissolved oxygen levels increased in the aeration basins, which immediately eliminated the odors.
A shopping center in Ventura, CA with several major retail stores, was suffering from a sewer odor problem.
The treated effluent from all wastewater treatment plants across the country must meet local dissolved oxygen (DO) limits before discharging into receiving waters.
The LeSourdsville WWTP in Butler County, Ohio, was required to meet their NPDES permit requirement of 6 mg/l dissolved oxygen at the plants Miami River outfall.
A large vegetable processing facility was experiencing problems with its lagoon surface aerators. The company’s treatment process includes a collection and screening assembly, two anaerobic stabilization ponds and a 40 million gallon aerated lagoon.
A design/build contractor needed a quiet, efficient aeration system for a 250,000 GPD field erected WWTP that was to be located adjacent to a school. A restriction on ambient noise at the location of the proposed WWTP required a quiet aeration process. Read the full case study to discover how Mazzei solved the problem.
The challenge for Sulzer was to prove that the new products are even better than the reliable and proven components previously used in two aeration basins of the new Pulawy wastewater treatment plant in Poland.
The VertiCel® system is superior to other aeration technologies because it saves energy and space, while producing an unparalleled effluent quality. It is ideally suited for wastewater treatment plants with process flows above two million gallons per day. The VertiCel® tanks in series design consists of an aerated-anoxic tank followed by an aerobic tank.
Often times the biosolids management portion of the treatment plant may not be optimized, resulting in inefficient operation of the entire treatment plant. For instance, did you know that aerobic digestion is the second largest consumer of energy after biological treatment aeration at a wastewater treatment plant? Or, do you realize that up to 50% of the nutrient loading on any given day may be coming from the biosolids process?
ClearBlu builds package pH balancing systems for high strength wastewater that are robust and low maintenance. High strength strength wastewater can easily blind pH sensors, even when they are insertion mounted in a pipe. ClearBlu utilizes digital self-cleaning immersion sensors for reliability, longer periods between calibration and lower chemical usage.
EPDM elastomers’ fully saturated backbone lends these diffusers superb resistance to ozone and oxygen, while its non-polar nature provides resistance to ketones and alcohols. These economical membranes also offer excellent chemical, heat, acid and phosphate fluid resistance. With good low temperature flexibility, this series’ technology provides optimum performance and stability over a broad range of operating temperatures. Our Columbus, Drake and Magellan membrane technology is not recommended for applications where petroleum or mineral oils, or di-ester lubricants are present.
Sanitaire fine bubble ceramic disc aeration systems incorporate superior and advanced engineering features in the ceramic element, the diffuser sealing method and the piping system joints and supports. The premier line of SANITAIRE fine bubble ceramic disc diffusers is considered the most efficient technology available for oxygen transfer in wastewater treatment applications.
Discussing the projects that RWL Water has been involved with in 2016, you understand just how variable the world of water treatment really is.
When it comes to wastewater lagoons, there are three main challenges that operators run into. The first, similar to other parts of the nation’s wastewater treatment infrastructure, is age. The second is compliance with new EPA ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus limits which many lagoon plants weren’t designed to deal with. And the third is expansion as communities grow and need additional capacity.
At WEFTEC 2016, Evoqua Water Technologies explored six core challenges faced by wastewater treatment plants -- energy reduction, nutrient removal, odor and corrosion control, aging plant equipment, water reuse and disinfection. In this Water Online Radio interview, Paul Rice, Municipal Marketing Director with Evoqua Water Technologies, discusses energy reduction and nutrient removal in more detail.
At the wastewater treatment facility, the biggest energy consumer is almost always the multistage aeration blowers. Replacing these blowers with high speed turbo blowers can save energy but the short-term cost to replace the existing blowers, reroute pipe and set new foundations can make the change a hard sell.
With a variety of blower combinations available to optimize aeration performance at wastewater treatment plants, efficiencies are now being found by focusing in on aeration control systems. Eric Bennett, Controls Product Manager with Aerzen, recently discussed the advantages operators are finding by deploying the company's AERProcess solution in managing energy use, optimizing biological processes and reducing wear and tear on blowers and valves.
Find out the importance of total cost of ownership in wastewater treatment applications and how Atlas Copco supports this approach.
Fluence’s Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR) technology is an innovative wastewater treatment solution which saves up to 90 percent energy consumption. It is the ideal solution for decentralized applications such as rural villages, housing developments, municipalities, hotels, resorts, and golf courses.
Surrounded by agricultural fields where water is a vital resource, the rural region of Hayogev, Israel chose Fluence’s energy-efficient Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR) solution for wastewater treatment suitable for reuse.
Mazzei’s GDT process delivers rapid and efficient ozone mass transfer under pressurized contacting conditions resulting in greater gas solubility. Additional mixing and rapid gas bubble removal is provided by the system’s degas separator. With high operational flexibility and low capital, installation and operating costs ― and all within a compact footprint ― the GDT mixing and contacting system is the best solution.
Mazzei’s wastewater basin aeration system thoroughly agitates bulk water and mixes ambient air or pure O2 into the wastewater. Utilizing in-house CFD modeling, Mazzei systems are designed to ensure efficient mixing and aeration. Unlike blowers, Mazzei aeration is virtually silent, and requires little to no maintenance.
A common first step in the secondary treatment process is to send wastewater to an aeration tank. In an aeration tank, bacterium is used to effectively break down pollutants into less harmful components. Wastewater aeration provides the appropriate oxygen level so that aerobic bacteria can thrive in degrading pollutants such as iron and manganese as part of the wastewater treatment process. Aeration can also be used to destroy anaerobic bacteria that perish in the presence of oxygen. Aerobes that can break down pollutants 10-100 times faster than anaerobes are used most frequently.
Aeration is also used to improve waste lagoons and other waterways such as lakes and reservoirs where oxygen deficiency contributes to taste, odor and pollutant problems. Equipment used for wastewater aeration includes low cascades, jet fountains, spray nozzles, blowers, submerged perforated pipe and porous plates or tubes. Whether the water is thrown into the air via a fountain or diffused by air bubbles being blown or drawn into the wastewater in an aeration tank, aeration works by increasing the area of contact between the oxygen in the air and water.
The most common wastewater aeration process in use today is the air diffusion process, where air is introduced from blowers through diffusion tubes suspended in a spiral flow tank, or in some cases, through diffuser plates in the bottom of the aeration tanks.
