Wastewater

Optimizing Wastewater Treatment with a High-Performance Aeration Blower System

By Sam Gooldy, Senior Manager, Marketing and Product Development, UCA

In a strategic move to enhance environmental sustainability and operational efficiency, Universal Compressed Air (UCA) partnered with a leading waste services provider in the Southeast to design, build, own, operate and maintain a state-of-the-art blower System for wastewater pond aeration. This innovative solution, part of a five-year agreement, delivers over 20,000 scfm of low-pressure air while guaranteeing uptime, performance and significant cost savings.

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Understanding Positive Displacement and Centrifugal Blowers

By Tom Jenkins

Learn the key differences between positive displacement (PD) and centrifugal blowers and how advances in blower technology, variable-speed controls and lifecycle cost analysis are reshaping equipment selection. This article explains blower operating principles, performance characteristics and application considerations to help engineers optimize energy efficiency, reliability and long-term operating costs in wastewater, industrial and process air systems.
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East Peoria WWTP Modernizes Aeration System

By Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Blower & Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

In 2019, the City of East Peoria, IL, began a comprehensive modernization of its wastewater infrastructure, including a $68 million upgrade covering two operating facilities, Wastewater Treatment Plant No. 1 and Wastewater Treatment Plant No. 3. The project addressed aging equipment, regulatory pressure and the need for improved process control.
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What Is Most-Open-Valve Aeration Blower Control?

By Bob Kisler, Regional Sales Manager, Hoffman & Lamson, and Doreen Tresca, Marketing Manager, SSI Aeration

Most-Open-Valve (MOV) control is a common automatic dissolved oxygen (DO) control system. By reducing the required aeration blower discharge pressure, MOV can improve basin efficiency and reduce power requirements if the MOV and aeration blower controls are properly coordinated.
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Advanced Aeration Control for Blowers

By Tom Jenkins, President, JenTech Inc.

The ideal blower control matches the blower airflow to the process demand. The process demand, in turn, must be established by the aeration control system. This control strategy has become standard practice in most treatment facilities because of its proven effectiveness in reducing energy consumption and improving process stability.
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Inovair Aeration Blowers Pass the Test at Colorado WWTP

By Troy Dreier, Blower & Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

The wastewater treatment plant for the City of Lafayette, Colorado, is a Class B biosolids facility. It meets grid regulations for volatiles reduction with at least a 38% reduction, and has a solids retention time (SRT) of at least 15 days at 95°F (35°C). Class B biosolids can be used as fertilizer for livestock feed and other applications that don’t directly lead to food for human consumption.
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VFDs Improve Multistage Blower Performance

By Tom Jenkins, JenTech and Lee Pinkerton, Metropolitan Council Environmental Services

Many designers and operators believe that multistage centrifugal blowers are not suitable for variable speed control. They also feel that multistage centrifugal blowers are an inefficient option for wastewater aeration. Implementing VFD control of their aeration blowers allowed the plant to improve energy efficiency. The reduction in energy expense paid for the system upgrade in less than two years.
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PD Blower Package Reliability

By Tom Jenkins, President, JenTech 

High levels of reliability can be achieved in two ways. First, by design – employing quality materials, proven components, and simplified mechanisms. Second, by incorporating advanced monitoring techniques that identify abnormal operating conditions, provide notification to operators, and initiate equipment shutdown before catastrophic failure occurs. Modern positive displacement (PD) blower packages use both techniques to improve system reliability.
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U.K. Wastewater Treatment Plant Blows Away Inefficiency

By Sulzer

Derby Sewage Treatment Works handles wastewater for a population of 440,000, processing an average of 1’000 liters and a maximum 2,300 liters of effluent every second. After water has passed the inlet and mechanical screens, it gravitates into the primary settlement tanks, where solids settle as sludge at the bottom. The sludge is drawn off and anaerobically digested to produce renewable fuel, but liquid flows onto the activated sludge plant.
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Overcoming Aeration Turndown Limitations with Compressed Gas Mixing

By Sarah Elger, P.E., Director of Product Innovation & Strategy, and John Koch, P.E., Vice President of Technology, EnviroMix Inc.

When a facility plans for a wastewater treatment plants, they typically design based on population and industry growth twenty to thirty years into the future. Regulatory requirements often dictate designing the activated sludge process equipment based on future-state influent flow and loading conditions, resulting in decades of constrained, inefficient, and suboptimal operation.
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Energy-Saving Industrial Wastewater Agitation Projects

By Hank Van Ormer, Technical Director, APenergy

The objective of this article is to look at typical industrial wastewater agitation processes and share various energy saving compressed air/blower projects that have worked well over the years. These basic fundamentals are a good starting point to begin the evaluation of a project idea. There are three primary uses of compressed air in all wastewater treatment applications. This article will focus on agitation and movement of materials.
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Design Tips for Aeration Blower Rooms

By Tom Jenkins, JenTech Inc.

Supplying air to process equipment necessitates a system approach. Selecting the blowers is a critical design step, but far from the final one. The layout of the blower room and ancillary equipment is just as critical to project success as the blowers themselves.
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Get the Most Out of Centrifugal Blower Control Upgrades

By Jeremiah Brown, BSEE/BSCE

Single-stage centrifugal blowers are a proven technology that have been around for many years and will probably be here for many years to come. A well maintained machine can last for decades and will likely outlast its original control system. Even if the control system is still in good working order the components might already be end of life and hard to replace if any of them fail. If you are thinking about modernizing the hardware (PLC / HMI / Instruments) this is also a great opportunity to make the system a little smarter and user friendly.
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Measuring Blower Airflow Rates with Calibrated Ammeters

By Tom Jenkins, JenTech Inc.

One definition of “calibrate” is “to determine, rectify, or mark the graduations of something”. An ammeter is an instrument for measuring electric current. Therefore the simple definition of a calibrated ammeter is a current measuring device marked with units of measure, presumably amperes. In the blower industry, however, the term has developed a specific meaning. A calibrated ammeter is an instrument that measures a blower motor’s current draw and converts the measurement to a display of blower airflow rate.
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Kansas WRRF Aeration Blower Upgrades Save 40% in Energy Costs

By Mike Grennier, Blower and Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

The plant recorded another win in its long list of accomplishments when it replaced aging multistage blowers with high-speed integrally geared blowers in 2020. The new blowers with Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) control are credited with a 40% reduction in energy consumption for aeration. This results in an annual savings of $35,000. The blower upgrade, which also helps protect the safety of employees, is expected to deliver a payback of less than five years.
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Controlling DO: A Good Average Isn’t Good Enough

By Tom Jenkins, JenTech Inc.

Most control systems use Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) algorithms for controlling DO, basin air flow distribution, and blower pressure or flow. These algorithms are prone to hunting - the cyclic fluctuation of the controlled variable. Fluctuations that oscillate the DO several mg/L above and below the target DO concentration are common.
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Considerations for Temporary Blower Air at a Wastewater Treatment Facility

By Matt Piedmonte and Scott Werner, Aerzen Rental USA

This article aims to discuss the various technologies of equipment that could be presented to a wastewater operator faced with a temporary need for blower air and to help the operator understand the impact (both monetarily through a “Total Cost of Rental” approach and environmentally) of their decisions.
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Design Engineering a WWTP Expansion with Unique Site Constraints

By Sam Werner P.E., Jones|Carter and Jacob Valentien P.E., Pacheco Koch

A small site located within a floodplain, prone to erosion, and currently occupied by an existing in-service wastewater treatment facility is not at the top of any engineer’s list for a desirable site to expand a wastewater treatment plant or reclamation facility. However, these challenges created opportunity for specialized solutions during the design of the facility expansion; in particular, in designing the aeration and digester blower system.
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WWTP Saves Energy in Biogas Recovery Process

By Uli Merkel, Busch Vacuum Solutions

Ever since it was commissioned in 1974, the Echallens wastewater treatment plant in the Swiss canton of Vaud has been generating power from the recovery of biogas. In May 2020, two old oil-lubricated piston compressors used to mix the sludge in the digester were replaced by one MINK claw compressor from Busch Vacuum Solutions. This enabled the amount of power required for this process to be reduced by up to 40 percent. For the director of the treatment plant, this means he needs less energy to produce energy.
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Rethinking Aerobic Digestion Resolves Frustrations, Improves Performance, and Saves Money

By David Lauer and Sarah Elger, EnviroMix

Aerobic digestion is a common treatment technology used at small-to medium-sized wastewater treatment plants for the treatment of waste activated sludge (WAS). The objective of aerobic digestion is to treat the sludge for disposal, and for those trying to meet Class B biosolids, further reduce volatile solids (VS) and pathogens to ensure the sludge is suitable for land application.
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Blower Upgrade Saves Fraser Colorado Wastewater Treatment Plant Energy Costs

By Mike Grennier, Blower & Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

When the plant’s original aeration blowers became costly to operate and newer technology offered the promise of energy-savings, Fuqua took decisive action and replaced the older blowers with high-speed turbo blowers. As a result, the plant saves ratepayers approximately $30,000 per year in energy costs and bolsters the plant’s ability to maintain uptime and achieve extremely clean effluent.
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Three Different Sized Wastewater Treatment Plants Save Energy and Maintenance Costs with Aeration Blower Inlet Filter Upgrades

By Rob Geyer and Joe DiFederico, Endustra Filter Manufacturers

Optimized intake filters can save thousands of dollars annually in energy savings and may not require construction crews, engineering bids, or grant applications. The benefits can also be realized for treatment plants of all sizes. Described below are examples of three wastewater treatment plants that upgraded filters and came out ahead: a small rural operation with positive displacement (PD) blowers, a suburban plant using multi-stage blowers and a large urban plant that had already upgraded to airfoil bearing high-speed turbo blowers.
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Madison Utilities Wastewater Treatment Plant Blower Upgrade Saves Energy

By Mike Grennier, Blower & Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

One need look no further than the treatment plant’s digester project upgrade to see the value of the plant’s forward-thinking approach at work. The upgrade involved the replacement of five Positive Displacement (PD) blowers with four, high-speed Inovair integrally geared blowers for aerating the digesters. With fewer – and smaller – blowers the plant saves tens of thousands of dollars in energy costs per year. The blowers also offer flexibility to cost-effectively adapt to the need for increased water treatment in the future.
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KC Water Relies on Analytics to Optimize Wastewater Systems for Sustainability

By Tom Jenkins and Mike Grennier, Blower and Vacuum Best Practices Magazine

KC Water encompasses six wastewater plants and 43 flood and sanitary stations. There are 15 flood stations along the Missouri River that keep Kansas City dry. Then we have 1,350 acres of land for biosolids application. Industrial pre-treatment is the responsibility of the Regulatory Compliance Division. We all work closely together.
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How to Calculate Aeration Blower Energy Costs

By Tom Jenkins, JenTech, Inc.

Aeration blower upgrades may be part of a total plant upgrade and minimizing energy consumption is a critical consideration. Blower replacements are also a common Energy Conservation Measure (ECM) in cost-reduction programs.
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