Sewage wastewater treatment is a never-ending process for many municipalities and industrial concerns such as paper mills, chemical and natural gas processing plants, oil refineries and other various industrial facilities. This includes several types of wastewater treatment systems designed specifically for oily water treatment, sewage water treatment and the removal of a variety of other solids contaminating water through a wide range of industrial processes.

 

Until recently, the "go to" technology for solid waste removal from water has been a technique called Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF). This process involves the introduction of high-pressure air into a tank or basin containing wastewater, creating bubbles that act to cause suspended solids to float to the surface where they may then be removed through the use of skimming equipment. In some cases, such as use in the oil industry where DAF poses risk from explosion, Dissolved Gas Flotation, utilizing the introduction of natural gas to create bubbles, is used as an alternative.

 

Today, the next generation of industrial waste and sewage water treatment, dubbed Suspended Air Flotation (SAF). SAF provides a variety of benefits when compared to conventional DAF, including:

 

• Equipment size is only one-fifth as large, requiring a much smaller footprint 

• Removes more solids and those smaller in size 

• More cost-effective 

• Turns solids into a jelly-like substance that is more easily removed from the wastewater

 

The improvements of SAF over DAF are possible primarily through a better and more efficient air delivery system. DAF uses small amounts of air under high pressure to create bubbles. SAF uses large amounts of air at lower pressure, and each bubble created is covered in a chemical film that makes it super-attracted to the solids in the wastewater. DAF relies on inert bubbles physically trapping the solids passively, with no strong bond created. SAF's chemically charged bubbles actively attach themselves to the solids, causing them to quickly rise to the surface and remain floating. Using a lower pressure air delivery system, SAF also requires significantly less energy to operate, adding to its cost-effectiveness. Suspended air flotation implementation in sewage wastewater treatment and oily water treatment has resulted a total success so far.