A rental solution to create a wastewater treatment works avoided a four-month delay in the start of production at a fruit juice plant. Jean-Michel Dufour, Aerzen Rental deputy director, explains.
A food company built a new fruit juice production plant, which generated wastewater effluents that required treatment. A wastewater treatment plant expansion had also been planned; however, unforeseen events had caused a four-month delay in its construction. Without the ability to treat the effluent, the new production line could not be operated, which represented a weekly loss of €200,000 (£181,000) for the company. Rather than accepting the delay, the company chose to turn to a water engineering company to find a solution.
Aerzen Rental markets short and medium-term hire solutions supplying Aerzen blowers and compressors. From a depot in Derbyshire, it can quickly respond to customers’ needs for oil-free air and gas blower and compressor rental packages.
In addition to blowers, Aerzen Rental can offer fine bubble air diffusion grids, which can transform any tank into an aerobic treatment unit. The customer, which had already used this capability in the past, turned to Aerzen to install a temporary treatment solution in a sludge storage tank that was already on site.
For this process, it was decided to adopt a sequencing batch reactor process, requiring a complete set of equipment to be supplied. A sequential batch reactor is a type of activated sludge process in which wastewater is treated in batches, with all the steps of the treatment happening in one tank.
A generator was required to provide power to the equipment. Pumps and pipes transferred process effluents to a buffer tank and other pumps transferred homogeneous effluents into a mud silo. A 1500m³/h blower and three grids of fine bubble aeration diffusers were required to aerate the SBR tanks.
Implementation of the work faced several safety and logistical challenges that were identified and solved by the Aerzen Rental team. The construction site required stabilisation becuase the soft ground would not support the heavy equipment such as generators and blowers, and this was carried out by the public works contractor on site. An on-site crane lifted the aeration grids into the sludge tanks, but this could also have been done through the use of delivery trucks equipped with their own cranes. All the heavy equipment and accessories were connected and tested by Aerzen service engineers.
The biological treatment process has to be started by growing the “biological mass”, or raising a population of specific bacteria that will degrade the pollutants. Sowing the biological mass was accomplished using multiple deliveries of agricultural slurry.
Aerzen Rental was therefore able to offer a complete package solution to the customer in a quick and cost-effective way that successfully overcame the problem and avoided the impending costs.
www.aerzenrental.com | Debbie.mayes@aerzenrental.com
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