Blog - Projects

Bolivar ASR Plant

 
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The Bolivar ASR plant is located just to the North of Adelaide, and currently treats flows of about 180ML/day.    It has four multiple-pass aeration tanks, each over 21,000m3 volume, and has been in service since about 2001.

This plant was originally equipped with blade-type diffusers with silicone membranes, but multiple membrane failures over many years were imposing such a large cost burden on the plant owner that it seemed worth investigating alternatives.  Aer-Force initiated the concept of comparative diffuser tests, and supplied about 3,100 EDI diffusers to put on long-term comparative evaluation trials.   New Blade diffusers were also installed in another tank at the same time to provide a fair comparison.

A full suite of comparative backpressure and off-gas oxygen transfer efficiency tests were conducted on new diffusers of both diffuser types over a 3-year period from 2010.  These tests were conducted by Aqua-Audit under the supervision of Dr Joerg Krampe, now a professor at the University of Vienna.   Over the full test period the EDI 6P disc diffusers furnished by Aer-Force demonstrated consistently better performance and durability than the new blade-type diffusers installed at the same time.

As a result of these trials, all blade-type diffusers in all tanks were progressively replaced with EDI 6P diffusers over the following three years (2015-2017).   These diffusers have standard 230mm dia EPDM discs, and have performed excellently ever since.   They are still regularly tested and dosed by Aqua-Audit,

The comparative trials were the subject of published technical papers authored by SA Water’s Joerg Krampe in 2013 and by Nirmala Dinesh in 2017.

  • Tom Lawson (December 2020)