Wine Aerator, Garden Aerator, Pond Aerator, Wastewater Plant Aerator

Lawn aerator for healthy lawns

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:22:00 +0000

Why would any home owner wants a lawn aerator? Often foot traffic can cause the soil to be compacted which is not conducive for the uptake of plant nutrients and life giving oxygen. By aerating your lawn you will make your lawn more porous which can help make the uptake of nutrients and oxygen more efficient.

Membrane filtration halogenated by-product control

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:32:00 +0000

A common disinfectant used for water treatment is a 15% solution of Sodium Hypochlorite NaClO (Chlorination). It is made by reacting Sodium Hydroxide with Chlorine

2NaOH + Cl₂ = NaCl + NaClO + H_{2O

Chlorination of drinking water can oxidize organic contaminants, producing trihalomethanes (also called haloforms), which are carcinogenic.
Source: Wikipedia

One way to solve this problem is to use membrane filtration to filter off the precursors of halogenated products.}

Garden aerators and mailboxes

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:15:00 +0000

A home is not a bare house. It normally have a garden, rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, plus you would need to have a mailbox for your friendly postman to stuff in your letters in. You wouldn't like the friendly postman to throw your mail on your doorstep would you? If you don't provide a mailbox to receive your letters, that is just what might happen.

A garden need to be maintained. One of the problem that a garden may face is soil compaction which leads to poor aeration of the soil. To overcome that problem, there are garden or lawn aerator. There are 2 main types. One uses spikes to punch holes in the soil. Another pulls out plugs of soil. The second type is called a core aerator. It remove cores of soil to allow air contact.

A home, as mentioned earlier, also needs mailboxes. With the ubiquitous Internet, getting one that suit your home and your budget is easy, as you can verify from the above link.

If your home has a garden, a good choice is to have self-standing Column Mailboxes or you may prefer other types of residential mailboxes which are mostly wall mounted mailboxes.

That would make your home complete, a well aerated garden where earthworm can live in comfort and keep your lawn healthy and a mailbox to receive your important correspondences.

However, a home with a family need sustenance. To sustain a family requires the bread winner to work at a job for a salary to take home, or to run a business. The site mailboxixchange also have a range of Commercial Mailboxes for his office or factory premises.

Economics: Viability of the Zero Energy Input Waterwheel Aerator

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:23:00 +0000

This is a reply to someone in a forum which can also be a discussion on the viability of this Zero Energy Input Waterwheel Aerator (click BACK button to get back to this page).

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the interest. The concept is good - use waste surplus energy for something useful, the problem is economics, the low price of electricity. As mentioned on the site, it can put 3.3 - 4kg of oxygen per annum per meter square of surface area. A plate has 2 sides, so per sq. meter of plate can get about 6.6-8kg of oxygen. This from the table for efficiency

Efficiency of Aeration System (click BACK button to get back to this page).

The least efficient uses 1.10 - 1.64kWh per kg oxygen
Cost of electricity depend on which country or location you are in. Some ideas may be obtained from

Basic Electricity Statistics (data for 2005 except where noted)

According to that site, cost to industry=5.13 US cent. That means the device can save max 40 US cent per annum. If we aim for cost recovery in 5 years, the device has to cost less than US2.00 per sq meter plate.

However, note that the cost of energy, especially petroleum and gas, is constantly increasing, and what may not be viable today may be viable in the future when the cost of energy (electricity) is sky high.

Opportunity to promote my innovation and services courtesy of Gumtree

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:49:00 +0000

I have published posts about my and my country's close links with Australia, so it is to my pleasure to come across this site Jobs in Adelaide. It is a site where you can post free advertisements. In the above case, it will be for advertisements related to jobs in Adelaide. I have sister, brother-in-law, nephews, nieces, colleague, friends and relatives spread around Australia, but I don't have any to the best of my knowledge, in Adelaide. Neither am l located in Adelaide. However, the consultancy and services job I seek can be done from any part of the world with an Internet connection, so I have no hesitation in posting a free ad at Jobs in Adelaide (or any part of the world) which will at the same time draw attention to the innovation that was instrumental in getting this blog started. This is an opportunity from heaven that need no money, only the time in preparing the ad.

You can see the ad at
http://adelaide.gumtree.com.au/adelaide/13/14683413.html

I did not make that an active link because as time goes by, the ad drops further down from the top of the page and I do not know if eventually the ad will become offline. If that happens, it will become a dead link, and search engines spider do not like dead links. It can affect a site search engine ranking. But Gumtree is very good in that they send an email to you as the ad drops from the top of the page, and to put it at the top, all you need to do is to click on a link. I would suppose if I continue to do that, the ad will continue to be online, but I can't be sure. If you want to see my ad, you will have to copy-paste the ad URL into your browser address bar and press the ENTER key.

Gumtree do not just post the kind of ad I posted. The also have Adelaide classifieds where you can post your ads in categories including Flat/House Share, Flat/House Rent, Stuff for Sale, Cars for Sale, Community, Friends/Dating, Jobs and Business Services.

This, Dating in Adelaide, should interest those who are looking for soul mates. If you are single, available and interested, try that site. If you are married, I hope you keep away. No offence meant, just common decency.

What you need for innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:42:00 +0000

This blog is about an innovation on how to increase the aeration efficiency of wastewater treatment as described at Increasing aeration efficiency in wastewater treatment and Zero Energy Input Waterwheel Aerator.

However, before you can come up with innovations like these, you need a good grounding in education and a wide general knowledge plus preferalbly a passion for innovation and independent thinking. A good start is to have some tutoring help like what your can find at Online tutoring which means you can get tutoring in a wide range of subjects at a touch of a button form your computer at home with Internet access. Included in the range of subjects you can get online tutoring are Maths and Algebra which are basic requirements for all field of studies.

Tutoring in particular subjects may not be the only thing you need. You may need help with homework in which case Homework Help will be a good help.

With a good foundation in basic education, you will be much better placed with coming up with innovations which are essential for the continued progress of our civilasation.

Wastewater engineers and innovators need life insurance as well

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Wastewater treatment plants need aeration, wasterwater engineers, plant operators and maintenance team. For progress and efficiency improvements, they also need innovators like me who came up with a possible way of increasing the energy efficiency of wastewater aeration in Increasing the energy efficiency of wastewater aeration aerobic wastewater treatment plants (click BACK to get back to this page).

All these people have something in common. They are not robots. They are human (that is, mortals). They can't live forever. And for the majority of them, they have families (dependents) who depend on their paychecks they bring home. If anything happened to them, the dependent will at best be faced with a lower standard of living, or worst, face great difficulties or may even lose the home they depend for shelter. The wise ones will get life insurance policies for protection.

There are types of life insurance policy. The purest form is Term Life Insurance. It require the lowest premium and is like car insurance or fire insurance. If nothing happens, you get nothing back. You can read more about this particular form of insurance at term insurance

Shopping for an insurance policy is a hassle. Being able to do that online and being able to get an instant quote is a great convenience, and you can do that at term life insurance quotes.

Aerators (Ventilators) and Lightings for your House

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:29:00 +0000

One need not confine aeration to water. Houses too need aeration (ventilation). Farrey's sells online a range of ventilators at Ventilation and Vent Fan Products. They also sells a range of thousands of unique ceiling fans and accessories at Ceiling Fans and Fan Accessories for good circulation of air in your house.

However, Farrey's is not just limited to ventilation and air circulation products. They also offers hundreds of thousands of lighting fixtures, lights, lamps and outdoor lighting in a wide range of styles from top manufacturers like Ambience, Fine Art Lamps, Flos, Fontana Arte, George Kovacs, Hinkley Lighting, Kichler Lighting, Maxim Lighting, Minka Lavery, Murray Feiss, Quoizel, Sea Gull Lighting, etc. There are chandeliers, accent lamps, bath vanity strips, desk lamps, pendant fixtures, mini-pendants, floor lamps, desk lamps, picture lights, wall mounted sconces, flush and semi-flush ceiling light fixtures, wall mounted fixtures, etc. You can also get outdoor lights like pier mount lanterns, post mount lanterns, flood lights, deck lights, landscape lighting, etc.

Surf over to Lighting and you will find fine art lamps, forecast lighting, hinkley light fixtures and more. You have to surf over there to see for yourself.

Planet Panel, sharing your thoughts and getting your voice heard

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Someone gave me a link to this interesting website today: Planet Panel. That was an entry page that allows one to read the site in various languages including
English
German
Korean
Spanish,
Russian,
Mandarin,
Italian,
Danish,
Swedish,
Turkish,
French,
Japanese.
I chosed "English" and was taken to a Welcome to Planet Panel" page.

Found something that attracted me. It says it is a global community of people from 21 countries which encourages one to meet new people, share one's thoughts, look for advice and gets one's voice heard. That attracted me because I will like to share my thought on my "Zero Energy Input Waterwheel Aerator" and get people's opinion of it.

So without much hesitation, I went to the Planet Panel signup page, gave my first and last name, username, password and email address, read and agreed to the simple terms and registered. Having registered, the next page I was taken to was to indicate the country I live in. Next was the preferred language. That was the end of the registration process.

This page Planet Panel give members 2 ways of expressing oneself - post questions, answers or thoughts on various topics that interest you and participate in consumer surveys for informational purposes only.

I was looking for ways to post my thoughts on my Zero Energy Waterwheel Aerator and vaguely remembered that there was a forum for discussion, but could not find the link to it. However, I found the link to the FAQ, plus a link to the Contact Page. I clicked on that and input my first name, last name, email address and typed in my message. Now I am awaiting a response from Planet Panel. Will update this post as soon as I get the response.

Purpose of Aeration

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:58:00 +0000

What is the purpose of aeration. In this post, we will discuss the various objectives of water aeration:

Removal of organic matters

This is the main objective of aeration in wastewater treatment. It uses microorganism and oxygen to convert the disolved organic matters to carbon dioxide, water and sludge (dead microorganism).

Removal of Volatile Organic Compounds

Aeration can strip volatile organic compounds from water, the effectiveness of which depend on their solubility and their volatility. Laboratory studies have shown that aeration can be an extremely effective way of removing chlorinated organics from water.

Iron Removal

For domestic drinking water, iron is not an acceptable constituent. It imparts a bitter, metallic taste and stain wash basins, toilets, urinals, bath tubs, showers, tiled floors and walls, cloths, in fact, everything it comes in contact with. Iron concentration exceeding 0.2 to 0.3 mg/l may be objectionable even though its presence is not objectionable from the hygienic point of view.

Aeration is also used for oxidation of iron in the water into compounds which are subsequently removed by filtration. Iron filtration operate on the principal of oxidizing the iron to convert it from a ferrous (dissolved or soluble) state to a ferric or undissolved state. Once in the ferric state, the insoluble iron compounds can be filtered out. For best results, the pH of the water should be between 6.5 and 10.0. The higher the pH, the faster the dissolved ferrous state can be converted to the insoluble ferric state.

Sulfur Removal

Hydrogen Sulfite or H₂S, while not a health hazard, cause the rotten egg smell in water which people find offensive. It can be partially removed by aeration. Sulfur dioxide or SO₂ and other gasses are more soluble in air than water so are transferred to the rising air bubbles

Reduce Algae

Aeration removes nitrogen, ammonia and soluble phosphate which are food for algae. The deprivation of food reduces algae growth. Aeration also helps aerobic bacteria, which have a very robost appetite for organic matters, to thrive. Aerobic bacteria are more efficient consumer of nutrients and thus their consumption by the aerobic bacteria lead to food starvation by the algae.

Wastewater treatment

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 01:26:00 +0000

How is wastewater treated?

Wastewater treatment can be divided into 3 stages - preliminary treatment, primary treatment, secondary treatment. Preliminary treatment consists of physical screening of large objects. In Primary treatment, the wastewater is held in a separation tank to allow particles to settle to the bottom and grease to float to the top. The solids are drawn off the bottom and skimmed off the top and sent for further treatment as sludge. Secondary treatment is a biological treatment to remove dissolved organic matter from the wastewater. Aerobic microorganisms are allowed to consume the dissolved organic matter. For this purpose, sufficient oxygen have to be provided and this is where aeration comes in. For more details, links to other websites are provided below:

Wastewater Treatment Principles and Regulations

Wastewater Treatment, Water Use

AERATION

BOOKS:

Theory and Practice of Water and Wastewater Treatment

Wastewater Engineering: Treatment and Reuse

Small and Decentraliszed Wastewater Management System

Simplified Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations

Water and Wastewater Calculations Manual

Zero Energy Waterwheel Aerator

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:47:00 +0000

Before the non-believers of zero energy devices start bashing this blog, let me explain that the reference to no energy input refers to the claim that one do not supply any energy to this aerator. One uses external existing waste energy to power the aerator. Wastewater in wastewater treatment plant such as oxidation ditch are often in constant motion.

Oxidation ditch
Oxidation ditch
Oxidation ditch
Floating aerator
Note the tremendous amout of turbulance (kinetic energy) in the water stream.

ZERO ENERGY INPUT AERATOR

The device being proposed consists of circular discs fitted with suitable number of paddles. When flowing wastewater pushes against the paddle, the discs rotates. As the discs rotate, wastewater clinging to the surface of the discs are brought up and large surfaces of the wastewater are constantly exposed to the air for the diffusion of oxygen into the water.

Efficiency of Aeration System

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 02:20:00 +0000

Efficiency of Aeration System

The efficiency of aeration systems can be measured in different ways. Different aeration system have different efficiency. The exact efficiency of an aeration system is very dependent on the circumstances under which it is measured such as liquid depth, density of diffuser, energy level in the tank, etc. Below is a table of the efficiency of various aeration system adapted to give values in kilowatt-hour per kilogram of oxygen adapted from the table give by Environmental Dynamics In. (Energy Consumption and Typical Performance of Various Types of Aeration Equipment)

Aeration System	kWh/kg
Mechanical Aeration Systems
Brush aerators surface aeration	0.47-0.66
Slow speed surface	0.47-0.55
High speed splash surface aeration	0.51-0.66
Induced surface aeration	1.10-1.64
Combination Systems
Submerged turbine	0.66-1.10
Jets (pumps with compressors)	0.47-0.82
Diffused Aeration, Coarse Bubble
Static tubes	0.47-0.82
Wide band grid	0.47-0.66
Misc. coarse bubble	0.47-0.82
Diffused Aeration, Fine Pore
Ceramic disc or ceramic dome grid	0.23-0.33
Flexible membrane disc	0.23-0.41
Advanced Technology membrane	0.14

Aerobic wastewater treatment

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 23:23:00 +0000

Aerobic wastewater treatment uses microorganism to feed on waste in the water and convert them to carbon dioxide and water. To keep the process going, the wastewater need to be aerated with oxygen. There are many types of aerators used for this purpose, but all of them involve huge input of energy. Wouldn't it be great if one can have an aerator that can add oxygen to the wastewater without great "input of energy"? What is this "Zero Energy Input" Waterwheel Aerator all about?

I know this "Zero Energy Input" thing will raise some eyebrows! Essential, what it aim to do is to make the energy intensive water aeration more efficient. What I am refering to is a waterwheel aerator using the EXISTING surplus kinetic energy present in wastewater treatment systems to power the aerator to squeeze more oxygen into the wastewater. Thus there is no need for expensive input of energy. Keep a watch on this blog as I will elaborate on this later and also present the results of an investigation which shows that this does work.

Aeration and aerators

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 02:54:00 +0000

What is aeration?

Aeration is the process by which the area of contact between water and air is increased, either by natural or mechanical means, resulting in air being suspended in water.

Purpose of aeration

One of the pollutants of water are organic matters. The reason why organic matters are considered water pollutants is that microorganism feed on them, and in the process used up the dissolved oxygen needed for aquatic life. If the organic matters are in sufficient quantity, this can lead to nearly all the dissolved oxygen being used up, aquatic life killed, and to anaerobic conditions in which anaerobic microorganism produces hydrogen sulfite and other odorous constitutents are produced.

The purpose of aeration of water is the improvement of their physical and chemical characteristics, the removal or reduction of objectioanl taste and odor and precipitation of inorganic contaminants such as iron and manganese. In water treatment, the purpose of aeration to to ensure continued aerobic conditions for the microorganism to degrade the organic matters.

Types of aerators

Waterfall aerators which uses spray nozzles, cascades or multiple trays

Mechanical aerators which employ motor driven impellers or combination air-injection devices

Surface spray or vertical pump aerator which have a submersible motor which rotates an impeller to pump surface water into the air as a spray. A vertical pump aerator consists of a motor with an impeller (propeller) attached to its shaft. The motor is suspended below a float with a center opening and the impeller jets water into the air at low velocity.

A pump-sprayer aerator employs a centrifugal pump to spray water at high velocity through holes in a manifold and into the air.

Paddle wheel aerator uses paddles mounted on a rotating shaft. A paddle wheel aerator splashes water into the air as the paddle wheel rotates

Propeller aspirator pump. The propeller-aspirator-pump aerator has a high velocity, uncased impeller at the end of a hollow shaft and housing. In operation, air flows down the shaft by the venturi principle and is released into the water in fine bubbles

Diffusion or bubble aerators which bubble compressed air through water. They may be divided into fine pore and coarse bubble aerator. Fine bubble aerators have high OTR (Oxygen Transfer Rate) and high efficiency (oxygen transfered per unit energy per unit time).

Membrane diffuser, a fairly recent technology, operate with low maintenance.

Increasing the Efficiency of Aeration in Aerobic Wastewater Treatment

noreply@blogger.com (Enviroman) — Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:03:00 +0000

Aerobic wastewater treatment uses microorganism to feed on waste in the water and convert them to sludge, carbon dioxide and water. To keep the process going, the wastewater needs to be aerated with oxygen. There are many types of aerators used for this purpose, but all of them involve huge input of energy. Aeration in wastewater treatment is a very energy intensive process. One small wastewater treatment for a PE (Population Equivalent) of 80,000, for example, consume 2,400,000 kWhr. (Malaysian Ringgit 600,000 or USD169,671.26) annually just for aeration. Increasing its efficiency even if only by a small percentage may make a significant difference.

Wouldn't it be great if one can have an aerator that can add oxygen to the wastewater without great "external input of energy"? What is this "Zero Energy Input" Waterwheel Aerator all about? I know this "Zero Energy Input" thing will raise some eyebrows! Essential, what it aims to do is to make the energy intensive water aeration more efficient. What I am refering to is a waterwheel aerator using the EXISTING surplus kinetic energy present in wastewater treatment systems to power the aerator to squeeze more oxygen into the wastewater. Thus there is no need for expensive additional input of energy. In oxidation ditches, excess flow velocity is detrimental to the oxygen transfer rate and need to be slowed down. In fact, it seems baffles are introduced to slow down the velocity:

"Where power input intensity is high, for example when treating strong wastes, the induced velocity in the ditch will also be high and the differential speed between mixed liquor and rotor blades reduced, causing a loss in aeration efficiency. This may be overcome by installing deceleration baffles upstream of the rotor. A steel channel or timber beam submerged in the top layer of the ditch and spanning the ditch width may be used" (M A Pells "Oxidation Ditches in Wastewater Treatment" p209).

So if it is necessary to slow down the velocity, why not use it to power a waterwheel to squeeze more oxygen into the wastewater?

The device (Rotafall) being proposed consists of circular discs fitted with suitable number of paddles. When flowing wastewater pushes against the paddles, the discs rotates. As the discs rotate, wastewater clinging to the surface of the discs are brought up and large surfaces of the wastewater are constantly exposed to the air for the diffusion of oxygen into the water. Tests shows that rotafall can add about 3.3 to 4 kg oxygen per square meter surface area per annum. A plate has 2 surfaces, so per square meter of plate it can add 6.6 to 8 kg oxygen to the water. To further increase the efficiency, the plates can be colored black to absorb solar energy. This will increase the temperature of the bacteria culture sticking on the plate, and will increase in exponential manner the rate at which they uses up the oxygen in the wastewater, and thus a lower dissolved oxygen concentration in the wastewater. A lower concentration will lead to a higher oxygen transfer rate.

The concept is sound, the device put waste surplus kinetic energy to work, it works. Only question is, can one construct the waterwheel aerator cheap enough, or will the cost of energy increase enough to justify the amount of additional oxygen added to the wastewater.

Some wastewater treatment plants use diffusers which produces rising air bubbles to aerate the wastewater. Thus, another version of Rotafall is feasible. This one will use the buoyancy provided by the rising bubbles trapped in the paddles to power the rotation of the waterwheel.

Update 15 June 2007

To date, I have obtained only 6 comments in this post to date, some of which were spam comment and had to be deleted. There were no comment on whether this innovation is workable and viable. Trying to get more feedback. How to do it? Found someone asking a question What is Carbon Dioxide. I saw 2 answers there, one of them which was very good.

So I decided to join BlurtIt and ask a question related to this post. Signing up was easy. I then proceeded to ask a question, but found they have a limit to the number of maximum 100 words, and there is a word count which didn't seem to reflect the actual number of words. Anyway I proceeded to type my question including a hyperlink to this post which has a long URL as shown below:

http://aerator.blogspot.com/2005/10/increasing-efficiency-of-aeration-in.html

I proceeded to type the HTML including pasting the URL in, but couldn't see the end of what I entered into the question box. So what I did was to edit the hyperlink HTML so that it just consist of the above URL minus the <a href=".... I couldn't see or access the end of the question and posted it anyway, but it was actually published with the full URL visible, but not clickable. You can see the question here: Is this a workable solution to increasing aeration efficiency for wastewater treatment?. I wasn't happy that the URL was not clickable.

So I tried to resort to using http://tinyurl.com/ and redoing the question. I really can't remember fully what I did, but I do remember observing that the end of my question still wasn't visible or accessible. I think I went ahead to test it anyway, tried to change the question to "Is this a viable solution to increasing aeration efficiency for wastewater treatment?". The response was "This question has been asked before...." even though I changed the title of the question. Now just in case my inability has anything to do with asking a question more than once, etc., I opened a different browser and signed in again. (This is one advantage of using more than one browsers which I have often recommended to bloggers in my post Why you should be using more than one browsers. I still don't understand why so many surfers are sticking to just one browser Internet Explorer 6 when there is one highly recommended and superior browser What is Firefox and why you should be using it, which offers the very useful tabbed browsing and other advantages.

Anyway, I signed in to BlurtIt again in a new browser and proceeded to ask the question, this time using the short URL that tinyurl.com generated for me. This time, I prepared the message in MS Word with the following question with HTML as shown in the scrollbox below:

Can I get feedback if <a href=http://tinyurl.com/2vpjpc>Increasing aeration efficiency</a> is viable?

I did a word count and came up with the following result:

Words: 11
Characters (no spaces): 91
Characters (with spaces): 101

The last one exceeded 100, so I really don't know if I would succeed in publishing the question. Anyway I proceeded to copy and paste it into the question box, and I think the end of the question still wasn't visible or accessible. I clicked "Ask my question now" and the question actually got published with a clickable link to this post. You can see the question at Feedback on an innovation please.

Let's see if I get a response there or some additional feedback in the comments here. Also, I see a "Help" link at BlurtIt and I will take the trouble to ask them why I am having difficulties in seeing or accessing the end of the message and if anything can be done. Will update this post if I managed to contact them and get a response