Optimization of the Aeration System in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant


Optimization of the Aeration System in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant

Mohseni, E.; Herrmann-Heber, R.; Reinecke, S.; Hampel, U.

In Germany wastewater is treated in 10000 plants which use 4.400 GWh of energy per year. From this big figure, up to 70% is consumed in the biological treatment and the portion of only aeration of waste water in activated sludge tank is about 50% of the whole figure. Aeration is the essential part of the process since the microorganisms need to be provided by sufficient amount of oxygen to degrade ammonia. Aerators with flexible membranes located at the bottom of the aeration tank are currently state of the art for this process. However the process suffers from some limitations such as high pressure drop, insufficient mixing and underutilization of oxygen. These are mainly due to scarce knowledge about gas dispersion inside the tank.
Initial bubble size in gas dispersion is of a great importance since it determines the ascent and coalescence rate, macro mixing by turbulence, and oxygen transfer from the bubble to the fluid phase. The initial bubble size is drastically influenced by the type of aerator which is being used in the tank. The typical bubble size generated by flexible membrane aerators has been determined to be between 2-4 mm by Hasanen et al. (Hasanen, 2006). However, this is considerably higher than the optimal bubble size calculated by Motarjemi and Jameson (Motarjemi, 1978) who reported the range of 0.7-1.0 mm for the optimal value for the 95% oxygen transfer to water in 3-6 m tank depth.
A novel approach uses solid perforated stainless steel aerators with fine pores in micro scale for gas dispersion. In this work bubble formation of stainless steel aerators has been experimentally investigated with a high resolution optical measurement technique by means of videometry and the results are compared with membrane aerators. Preliminary results of the stainless steel membrane sparger showed a significant reduction in the bubble size up to 47 % and consequently an increase in bubble residence time in comparison with flexible membranes.
A comprehensive set of experiments have been conducted in which the bubble formation with respect to pore size, pore density, plate thickness, flow rate, membrane surface roughness, and bubble generation frequency have been investigated. Thanks to the state of the art manufacturing technique, very fine pores starting at 30 µm up to 200 µm have been processed which resulted in formation of bubbles in the range down to 1.4 mm diameter.
Current poster, presents the motivation of the project and the purposed approaches toward a solution and the initial results of the preliminary experiments done by means of videometry technique.

Keywords: Bubble Generation; Activated Sludge; Aeration; Biological Wastewater Treatment; Multiphase Flow

  • Poster
    11th HZDR PhD Seminar, 17.-19.10.2016, Oberwiesenthal, Germany

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-24895
Publ.-Id: 24895