Industrial Utility Efficiency

Wastewater

Air Compressor Design Considerations for a Successful Compressed Gas Mixing Project

By Chris Ahnen, Director of Engineering, EnviroMix

Compressed Gas Mixing provides uniform mixing of water or wastewater tank contents by firing programmed, short-duration, high-intensity bursts of compressed air through engineered nozzles located near the tank floor. Mixing parameters – including pressure, sequence, duration and frequency – may be adjusted, either through operator input or automatic process feedback, to optimize power use and deliver ideally mixed conditions. 

Read Full Story

20 Years of Case Studies: Plants Sharing Best Practices

Edited by Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® 

For 20 years, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine has published articles focused on helping manufacturers reduce power demand, lower water consumption, and improve the performance of compressed air, cooling, blower and industrial vacuum systems. In this article, we highlight a sampling of those stories across the following industries: Plastics and Packaging Food and Beverage Automotive and Transportation Cement, Building Materials, and Mining Metals, Pulp, and Paper Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, and Research Wastewater Treatment 
[ Read Full Story ]

Choosing the Best Wastewater Mixing System - How Compressed Gas Mixing Overcomes Daunting Challenges

By Sarah Elger, P.E., Director of Strategy and Marketing and John Koch, P.E., Vice President of Technology, EnviroMix Inc.

When selecting a mixing technology, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their consultant engineers must consider numerous factors, balancing specific treatment demands with plant priorities and ultimately choosing the technology that best suits their needs and specifications. Compressed gas mixing (CGM) is often the best solution, allowing designers to circumvent many challenges that alternative technologies either create or cannot overcome. 
[ Read Full Story ]

When Mixing is the Goal, Why Would You Aerate? Compressed Gas Mixing Provides an Alternative Approach

By David Lauer, P.E., EnviroMix

At the beginning of the 20th century, biological wastewater treatment — more specifically, the activated sludge process — was developed and became widely accepted as the treatment method for municipal wastewater, helping to protect our lakes and rivers from pollutants and support public health. In 1947, the Committee on Development of Uniform Standards for Sewage Works was created by the group known as the Great Lakes – Upper Mississippi River Board of State and Provincial Public Health and Environment Managers. 
[ Read Full Story ]

Pure & Enriched: The Advantages of Using Oxygen in Wastewater Treatment Processes

By Vince Hartley, Airgas, an Air Liquide Company

Wastewater treatment processes have come a long way in the past century, but demand continues to grow for more reliable and efficient treatment technologies. As a result, industry professionals are searching for an all-encompassing solution to enhance their treatment plants and processes. One of the purest environmental aids on the market is oxygen.
[ Read Full Story ]

From Wastewater Agitation to Air Compressor Controls-Food Processor Finds 74% Savings Potential

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

As many well know, system measurement is essential to ensuring a compressed air system is running efficiently and effectively, with good air quality and adequate pressure.  This is also well understood by a multi-national food company (name has been withheld to protect the innocent) who started a focused effort to measure and improve their compressed air systems in their many processing plants worldwide. 
[ Read Full Story ]

Study Proves Potential Energy Savings of AODD Pump Controls

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Air-operated double diaphragm (AODD) pumps are common to many manufacturing facilities. As estimated by veteran compressed air auditor Hank van Ormer of Air Power USA, approximately 85 to 90 percent of plants in the United States have AODD pumps. They are used for all kinds of liquid transfer applications, like those found in chemical manufacturing, wastewater removal, and pumping viscous food products.
[ Read Full Story ]

PTFE Membrane Bubble Diffusers Reduce Demand on Aeration Blowers

By Doreen Tresca, Stamford Scientific International, Inc.

Aeration tanks use bubble diffusers to distribute oxygen within the wastewater. Fine bubble diffusers, or those that produce a large amount of very small air bubbles, first began to become popular in the 1980s, as they had a much higher efficiency than coarse bubble diffusers. Fine bubble diffusers generally feature a membrane that allows airflow to pass from the piping system on the floor of the tank through the body of the diffuser and the membrane, providing oxygen into the wastewater for treatment. 
[ Read Full Story ]

Pneumatic Control in Modular Wastewater Treatment Plants

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The design of wastewater treatment plants is changing, and it has something to do with LEGO® bricks. More specifically, it has to do with how large and complex LEGO structures are built. If you follow the instructions carefully, you build module after module, eventually piecing them together to create a fully functional and cohesive unit.
[ Read Full Story ]

Turbo Blowers Generate Significant Energy Savings at Victor Valley Wastewater

By Robert Lung for the U.S. Department of Energy Better Plants Program

A replacement strategy for air compressors and blowers integrated into a system-level approach towards energy efficiency can deliver significant energy savings and optimize equipment performance. At the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority, a blower replacement project yielded annual energy savings of more than 928,000 kWh and \$98,000 in energy costs, while improving the reliability of its secondary treatment process. In addition, the agency qualified for important incentives from its electric utility — significantly improving the project economics and resulting in a 2.94-year payback.
[ Read Full Story ]

High Speed Bearing Technologies for Wastewater Treatment Applications

By Aleksandra Irving PE and Joseph Ibets PE, The Spencer Turbine Company

High speed bearing technology is applicable for aeration blowers operating at much higher speeds than the typical 60Hz, 3600RPM for cast multistage units. High Speed Turbo (HST) units are usually single stage (though some utilize multiple cores) and rotate from 15,000 to 50,000RPM. At such high speeds, standard roller bearings cannot offer the industry standard L10 bearing life. Two types of bearing technologies have come to dominate the wastewater treatment market for these types of machines: airfoil and magnetically levitated. Often the two technologies are compared as equals, however, in many significant ways they are not.
[ Read Full Story ]