Industrial Utility Efficiency
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.
From managing complex wastewater streams to protecting stored grain and sustaining fish health, effective airflow is essential to maintaining product quality and operational stability. How advances in blower technology, diffuser materials and automated controls are helping facilities improve efficiency, reduce energy use and meet increasingly strict environmental requirements.
The Best Practices 2025 EXPO & Conference contained plenty of sessions for industrial vacuum, blower and aeration blower professionals, including conference tracks, workshops devoted to pneumatic conveying and blower engineering and original equipment manufacturers on the EXPO floor.
Weftec 2025, a leading event for industrial and municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) technologies, took place September 29 to October 1, 2025 at Chicago's McCormick Place. The objective of this article is to provide readers with a sampling of aeration blower, motor and drive technologies on display.
Different industries have differing levels of toxins and contaminants that need to be reduced before wastewater can be discharged. The company specializes in understanding those requirements and creating custom turbo blowers to customer specifications. Its leading industries are pulp and paper, poultry and food and beverage.
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.
Historically, the most common dual point control has been combining inlet guide vanes and variable discharge diffuser vanes. These are both mechanical systems and predate the availability of economical variable speed control. Recent advances in power electronics technology and improved VFD economics have led to implementing other combinations for dual point control. These include combining VFD control with either VDVs or IGVs.
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.
In order to properly identify the performance requirements of a blower it is necessary to identify the inlet and discharge pressures. The friction losses in the inlet and discharge piping must be calculated to determine the total pressure requirement. This article details a simplified procedure for calculating piping losses.
Weftec 2023, a leading event for industrial and municipal wastewater treatment facilities took place October 2-5, 2023 at Chicago's McCormick Place. The objective of this article is to provide readers with a sampling of aeration blower technologies on display at the show. We regret not being able to include all exhibitors or visits made due to article length considerations.
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.
