Aerobic Wastewater Treatment

Flexible, Efficient Portfolio of Aeration Technologies and Equipment, including Oxygen Generators

Gases such as oxygen and ozone can play a key role in helping the world to better manage, treat and recycle increasingly scarce water resources. These gases are invaluable tools for the aerobic wastewater treatment industry in particular, which faces several operational challenges. One of the main problems involves maintaining a constant level of dissolved oxygen (DO) throughout a wastewater plant to ensure that the treatment process functions properly. Biological treatment processes, such as the activated sludge process (ASP), perform best if there is sufficient DO to support the bacterial population enabling the treatment.

Operators of industrial biological wastewater treatment plants are typically looking for cost-effective ways to increase capacity, manage foaming and odors, reduce sludge, avoid corrosion and manage costs. Many of these issues can be fully solved or substantially reduced through aerobic wastewater treatment - in other words, the systematic addition of pure oxygen to the water treatment process, often upstream of waste water filtration equipment.

Supporting Natural Purification and Disinfection Processes

Not only is oxygen more effective than air in supporting the natural treatment of water, it can handle higher concentrations of biomass within the wastewater biotreatment process. It creates optimal aerobic conditions for successful biological treatment, accelerates degradation rates and supports biological nutrient removal. By enabling the bacteria in the biotreatment process to break down soluble organic compounds more effectively, oxygen thus provides the ideal conditions to effectively reduce the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) level of the effluent.

How Does Oxygen Enrichment Benefit Biological Aerobic Wastewater Treatment Plants?

The addition of pure oxygen to aerobic treatment processes results in a number of efficiency, capacity and cost benefits. With the help of oxygen-boosted water, operators can:

• Cover scheduled aeration equipment maintenance windows
• Provide additional water purification capacity when existing aeration is limited
• Bridge production peaks and overcome bottlenecks
• Avoid process problems such as excessive foaming or the creation of aerosols and mists
• Improve odor control by reducing or even eliminating odors
• Reduce surplus sludge volumes
• Avoid corrosion in pressurized transfer pipes
• Reduce CAPEX for mid- and long-term capacity increases
• Secure additional oxygen demand during biological nitrogen removal

Overcoming Seasonal Load Challenges with Reliable Oxygen-based Aeration

Seasonal fluctuations in temperature can be a recurring pressure point for operators of water treatment plants. As temperatures rise in the summer months, so too does the temperature of wastewater. Aerobic bacteria are more active in warmer waters, raising biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) levels. The level of dissolved oxygen (DO) in wastewater drops, creating anoxic zones at the bottom of tanks, for instance. As anoxic or anaerobic activity increases, more and more malodorous gases such as sulfur dioxide are released, heightening the need for odor control. Not only are plant odors a nuisance to local communities, excess BOD can create compliance problems or even result in fees or fines from water treatment authorities.

These seasonal peaks are an excellent example of the benefits of pure oxygen instead of air. Oxygen-based aeration schemes give wastewater plant operators a cost-effective and efficient way to meet higher seasonal oxygen demand. Our SOLVOX family of oxygen-based aeration and mixing technologies gives you the tools you need to quickly reach your target DO level. Highlights of our SOLVOX portfolio include SOLVOX^® mobile. Speed and ease of deployment make this portable, lightweight submerged jet dissolver is the ideal solution for operators looking to bridge seasonal and production peaks or provide backup during maintenance.

Using Oxygen to De-stress Rivers and Lakes

The benefits of a supplemental water oxygenation machine is not limited to wastewater plants. Oxygen-based aeration is an extremely versatile process that can also help "de-stress" waterways. Bacteria in contaminated bodies of surface water can use up available supplies of dissolved oxygen (DO) faster than natural aeration can replenish, depriving other aquatic species. In severe cases, near-anaerobic conditions prevail due to lack of oxygen. This results in anaerobic fermentation processes, which in turn lead to bad odors (due to the formation of hydrogen sulfides and fermentation by-products), water discoloration, depletion of flora and fauna and formation of heavy metal precipitate sludges such as iron sulfides.

Our SOLVOX family of solutions oxygenate low-DO and anaerobic waters, helping to restore the DO balance and maintain natural recovery processes. We have developed a number of customized, flexible oxygenation delivery and mixing schemes for various governmental and local community-backed redevelopment projects supporting river rehabilitation and other aquatic remediation schemes.

Treatment of Drinking Water

Our SOLVOX portfolio can also contribute to secure supplies of safe drinking water for the world’s growing population. Gaseous oxygen is effective in the treatment of raw water, improving iron and magnesium removal while virtually eliminating foaming. In the case of ground water, for instance, oxygen can remove heavy metals and oxidize sulfides upstream of media filtration, ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis. Last but not least, ozone and oxygen treatment improves the taste of water, can reduce color and improve the performance of media filtration equipment.

Comprehensive SOLVOX^® Portfolio for Gas Treatment of Water and Wastewater

Building on decades of experience and close collaboration with hundreds of customers, we have a complete portfolio of oxygenation solutions to meet your temporary and permanent aeration and mixing needs. Our turnkey solutions include gas dosing equipment, electrical control systems, a liquid oxygen delivery scheme or an ECOVAR^® on-site gas generation system and the full support of our engineers for installation advice, supervision and commissioning services.

Our SOLVOX portfolio for the oxygenation of water offers a number of benefits:

• Increased treatment capacity for aerobic bio-treatment plants
• Lower CAPEX investment - no construction work needed
• Ease of installation and operations
• Highly efficient use of oxygen gas
• Flexible support for variations in oxygen demand
• No need for covered tanks
• Compatible with existing aeration equipment

Click on the links below for more information on our SOLVOX family members.

Oxygen Generators for Wastewater Treatment

Complementing our bulk and cylinder delivery network, we also offer on-site oxygen generators for water and wastewater treatment. Our ECOVAR^® family of oxygen generators gives customers a continuous, monitored and flexible gas supply solution - directly on site. ECOVAR oxygen generation plants extract oxygen by means of adsorption, combining standardized components for the greatest possible cost efficiency.