Fine bubble diffuser
pollution control technology
A fine bubble diffuser is a pollution control technology used to aerate wastewater for sewage treatment.
Description
Fine bubble diffusers produce a plethora of very small air bubbles which rise slowly from the floor of a wastewater treatment plant or sewage treatment plant aeration tank and provide substantial and efficient mass transfer of oxygen to the water. The oxygen, combined with the food source, sewage, allows the bacteria to produce enzymes which help break down the waste so that it can settle in the secondary clarifiers or be filtered by membranes. A fine bubble diffuser is commonly manufactured in various forms: tube, disc, plate, and dome.
Bubble size
The subject of bubble size is important because the aeration system in a wastewater or sewage treatment plant consumes an average of 50 to 70 percent of the energy of the entire plant. Increasing the oxygen transfer efficiency decreases the power the plant requires to provide the same quality of effluent water. Furthermore, fine bubble diffusers evenly spread out (often referred to as a 'grid arrangement') on the floor of a tank, provide the operator of the plant a great deal of operational flexibility. This can be used to create zones with high oxygen concentrations (oxic or aerobic), zones with minimal oxygen concentration (anoxic) and zones with no oxygen (anaerobic). This allows for more precise targeting and removal of specific contaminants.
The importance of achieving ever smaller bubble sizes has been a hotly debated subject in the industry as ultra fine bubbles (micrometre size) are generally perceived to rise too slowly and provide too little "pumpage" to provide adequate mixing of sewage in an aeration tank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fine bubble diffuser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.