VOxFlotation: Future Solution for Water Treatment

Abstract

Flotation is one of the most widely used approaches in water and wastewater treatment technology. Flotation is utilized in separating suspended matters such as solids and oils from water. There are variety of flotation methods depending on treatment targets and purposes. Among those, Dissolved-Air Flotation (DAF) is believed to be the most com-monly applied. Several advantages compared to sedimentation make DAF more pref-erably used. On the basis of DAF but with highly intelligent technology, SansOx Ltd has developed a new and unique flotation technology, known as the VOxFlotation, which is totally distinguished from any ever-known flotation system. All-in-one feature, small footprint, energy-efficiency, and cost-saving are the most important expectations from the VOxFlotation.

The objective of this thesis was to design a small-scale VOxFlotation system and to test the solids removal efficiency of the technology when treating the synthetic wastewater sample. The Design of Experiment (DOE) was conducted in the way that varies two quantitative variables in the VOxFlotation design: the diameter of nozzles (X) and the compressed-air pressure (P) to see how those factors would influence on the final Solid Removal Efficiency (SRE) of the system as well as their correlation. At last, the direc-tion for optimizing the process would be predicted.

The experiment results show that, generally, the designed VOxFlotation acceptably performed the solid removal although the maximum achieved SRE was only about 54%. Also, summary from regression model illustrates that the variables have signifi-cant influences on the removal efficiency and there is clear interaction between two variables. Higher removal efficiency is expected to be achieved at both higher diameter and compressed-air pressure. In brief, those interpretations can provide SansOx basic information and good starting points for their further testing with VOxFlotation system.