Development of a Water Purification System via Enhanced Aeration -1. Phenomenological Characteristics of the Aeration System.

Abstract

River, lake and reservoir environments have been drastically deteriorated along with the economical and industrial developments of the country. The change of the human life style is also another important factor affecting on the pollution of water environments. One of the most effective and economical ways to conserve, improve and purify the water environment should be the enhancement of the dissolved oxygen concentration by aeration. An enhanced aeration system is developed to cope with low efficiency, scale-up difficulty and restricted versatility accompanied with conventional aeration systems. The developed aeration system utilises the centrifugal shear stress to generate an enormous number of fine air bubbles and to establish the high propagation performance of mixing energy. The pressure loss of the cyclone-like aerator is deduced from the dimensional analysis and experimental works, which serves to scale up the aeration system and to evaluate the energy consumption of the whole system. The performance of the aeration system is experimentally evaluated in terms of the maximum aeration rate and the dissolved oxygen transfer rate. The former is confirmed to take a remarkably higher value and the latter is expected to be much faster than those in conventional aeration systems.