Experimental Oxygen Mass Transfer Study of Micro-perforated Diffusers

We studied new micro-perforated diffuser concepts for the aeration process in the wastewater treatment plant and evaluated their aeration efficiency. These are micro-perforated plate diffusers with orifice diameters of 30 µm, 50 µm and 70 µm and a micro-perforated tube diffuser with orifice diameter of 50 µm. The oxygen transfer of the diffuser concepts was tested in clean water and it is compared with commercial aerators from the literature. The micro-perforated tube diffuser and micro-perforated plate diffusers outperform the commercial membrane diffusers up to 44% and 20%, respectively, with regard to the oxygen transfer efficiency. The most relevant reason for the improved oxygen transfer is the fine bubble aeration with bubble sizes down to 1.8 mm. Furthermore, the more homogenous cross-sectional bubble distribution of the micro-perforated tube diffuser has a beneficial effect on the gas mass transfer due to less bubble coalescence. However, the pressure drop of micro-perforated diffusers seems to be the limiting factor for their standard aeration efficiencies due to the size and the number of orifices. Nevertheless, this study shows the potential for a better aeration efficiency through the studied conceptual micro-perforated diffuses.