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Does your wastewater treatment system need a boost in performance? Do you need low-cost help in meeting regulatory requirements for wastewater discharge? Do you need an affordable back-up system to keep your operations underway when your main facility is down for repair?
The air turbine is typically operated with a 5-horsepower motor, yet its performance can match that of aerators having up to 20 horsepower. No longer do you have to strain your operating budget just to pay the electric bill.
The VaraCorp turbine aerator offers several advantages to municipal wastewater plants. Compared to most other aerators, it offers
1) A lower purchase cost,
2) Almost zero maintenance costs, and
3) Lower electric energy costs. Of equal importance, it has outperformed competing aerators having up to seven times more horsepower (3 hp versus 20 hp.) Whether the system is an aerated lagoon or a stabilization pond, the VaraCorp aerator is ideally suited to ramp up microbial populations to process the wastes and reduce odors.
Most farms that operate confined animal feedlots need aeration to process the animal wastes in their lagoons. The issue is the safety of air as well as ground and surface water resources.
The dissolved oxygen produced by VaraCorp’s aerators can reduce concerns over disease pathogens as well as concerns over hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, volatile organic compounds, antibiotics, metals, and particulate matter.
In addition, hog wastewater aerators and poultry wastewater aerators can reduce the foul odors of hog and chicken lagoons. Plus, dairy wastewater aerators are increasingly being used by organic farmers to turn the dairy waste into a compost tea that is sprayed onto forage crops.
In the USA alone there are thousands of companies engaged in processes that create wastes that are discharged into waste lagoons. Each of these lagoons needs dissolved oxygen to ramp up microbial populations to process these wastes or to form oxides with some of the contaminants.
Examples are pulp and paper mills, mining operations, and metals processing. The VaraCorp aerator is uniquely suited to many of these industries due to its simplicity, efficiency, low relative cost, and its ability to be mounted on pontoons or on a dock or wall.
Wineries and breweries create thousands of pounds of liquid organic wastes each year. Most, but not all, of these wastes are ultimately discharged into the local municipal wastewater plant.
Other wineries and breweries are able to discharge the wastewater onto nearby fields. More and more municipalities are demanding that the wineries and breweries “clean up” the organic wastes BEFORE the treatment plant will accept the discharge water.
VaraCorp’s aerators are being used by a growing number of wine and beer manufacturers to reduce the biological demand of their wastewater stream to make it acceptable to the nearby treatment plant.
Until recently, the aerator of choice for the aquaculture industry has been some form of the paddlewheel. However, such aerators tend to be loud and costly to maintain, plus they have the potential to kill or maim the aqua species.
In contrast, the turbine makes very little noise, and it offers little to no danger to aqua species. More importantly, the turbine is virtually maintenance free. More and more aqua farmers are discovering the benefits of the turbine aerator.
Food processing plants from bakeries to fruit and vegetable canning operations have wastewater lagoons where process water is discharged. These waste lagoons have a need for dissolved oxygen since the biological oxygen demand of food is very high.
Because odor is a potential problem, these plants do not want an aerator which thrashes the top layer of the water, thus stirring up fermentation odors. They also cannot use bubble diffusers since the emitters tend to clog.
The VaraCorp turbine is an ideal aerator in that it injects dissolved oxygen beneath the water surface. It also creates a gentle current throughout the lagoon to mix the dissolved oxygen in the water.
Due to its design and flexibility the VaraCorp aerator can be used in batch reactors in several different industries such as chemicals or metals processing. In short, VaraCorp’s spinning turbine aerator is dropped into the top opening of a vessel where the liquid content is infused with dissolved oxygen or some other gas.
The capacity of these vessels, i.e., batch reactors, can range from a few thousand gallons upward. Batch reactors are used when smaller, discreet volumes of products are processed and then moved out so that the next batch can be infused with dissolved oxygen.
Few horticulture nurseries appreciate the boost in their operation which can come from the addition of dissolved oxygen to their irrigation water. Specifically, this boost can manifest itself in the bottom financial line.
Oxygen plays a key role in the root zone of plants and for this reason the irrigation water should be saturated with dissolved oxygen (DO.) With adequate DO in its irrigation water the nursery can expect stronger roots, better root-to-shoot ratios, a shorter growing time and possibly a reduction in the need for fertilizer.
VaraCorp’s aerator creates dissolved oxygen bubbles small enough that the DO stays in the water until it is applied to the plants.
Pulp and paper mills normally operate large ponds to handle the waste byproducts of their operations. Typically, these ponds are aerated with large floating aerators having 20- to 100-horsepower motors. The electrical energy costs of these aerators can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Even for those mills which produce their own power, these electrical power levels are a huge concern.
VaraCorp’s 5 horsepower aerators have shown themselves capable of outperforming aerators having 20 or more horsepower. Stated differently, VaraCorp’s 5-horsepower aerators have consistently injected more dissolved oxygen on a one-for-one basis than some competing 20-horsepower aerators.
In a pulp mill this would equate to nearly a 75% reduction in power costs with equal or greater aeration performance. On top of that savings, the capital costs on a horsepower-for-horsepower basis for VarCorp’s aerator are much less than many competing aerators.
Aeration Technology
VaraCorp’s turbine is a state-of-the-art aerator that is rapidly gaining popularity in many industries. Unlike other aerators the turbine takes advantage of two physics phenomena known as centrifugal force and precession as applied to rotating fluids. As the turbine spins, it creates a low-pressure zone in its internal chamber. Atmospheric pressure above the water surface forces air through air holes down the air shaft into this chamber. From there the air is discharged rapidly into the surrounding water by centrifugal force. The result is an immediate saturation of the water with a cloud of dissolved oxygen.