Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Seminar intro pfas talk · Acedra
Home
Explore
Chemistry
Seminar intro pfas talk
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
91 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:07
Welcome to today's seminar. My name is Beth Meschewski. I'm a research specialist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and co-organizer of the seminars. Our next seminar is on November 30th discussing per- and polyfloralalkyl substances in the environment presented by Erica McKenzie, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at Temple University in Pennsylvania.
0:32
I'll ask everyone in our audience to please silence or turn off electronic devices as we are recording this webinar. Also we will hold all questions until the end of the presentation at which time I will come around with a microphone so that those online can hear your question. For those viewing online, you can type in your question at any time and we'll answer those at the end as well. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce today's speaker, Sudhir Brahmbhatt.
1:02
Sudhir is president of the Technology Services Incorporated, which is based in St. Louis, Missouri. He has a wealth of knowledge in industrial gas applications for environmental, chemical, pharma, biotechnical, and medical industries and has more than 25 patents for inventions in these areas. His industrial experience involves Exxon, Air Products, Messer Griesheim, and Air Liquide with over 35 years of experience in this industry.
1:37
He has authored papers in Chemical Engineering, Ceramics Engineering, Cryogas International, Gasworld, and American Institute for Chemical Engineering magazine and was also interviewed by Cryogas International. He continues to be a consultant for a wide range of industries including top industrial gas manufacturers, chemical companies, and universities. Please join me in welcoming Sudhir. [Applause] [Sudhir] Thank you Beth. Today's presentation is gonna be more on use of industrial
2:19
gases in aqua industry, water industry, and I will touch on several things and if there's a interest to know more please let me know and I'll try my best to answer your questions. As Beth mentioned, these are industries and these are applications, the services, what my company does. And we are based in St. Louis, Missouri. Glencoe is close to Chesterfield, Missouri. You can find all information on the website if you're interested. Let's quickly focus on the wastewater treatment area initially.
2:58
You can see that oxygen is an inevitable part of wastewater industry. Now first question comes out of the oxygen: How is it made? How is it available? Just quickly want to go through as to what this is. You may use the term called ASU, air separation unit. The way the unit works is you take the clean air up, go through a compression stage, and there's something called Joule-Thompson effect. When you compress the air and expand it cools down and that's the
3:35
principle used in this production method. This is the distillation column where you have nitrogen, oxygen, argon coming out. Again it's a function of the boiling point of these gases and if they're looking at selling this liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, means going from their manufacturing places to other places. They use liquid products. So they basically compressed nitrogen, oxygen and you may see you on the road these big trailers going on.
4:07
They use the liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, liquid carbon dioxide, and all those gases. They are liquefied. On average, you can see that when they refer the term A100 for ASU as efficiently and means you make 100 tons per day of oxygen 100 tons per day of nitrogen and when they say liquid power of L200 that's a 200 tons per day of liquid products. That's what they refer. This is what industry norm is. This is what air separation looks like.
4:37
These are distillation columns and then you have product once it's produced, you hold it in the liquid form and then ship it to the different uses. Most of the liquid phase reactions when you look at whether you need oxygen as a reactant in the liquid phase, this is what you're going to see: water plus air. Theoretically, if you look at thermodynamic law and ambient condition, atmospheric pressure, and 56 degrees Fahrenheit temperature, you're going dissolve maximum eight parts per million of
5:14
oxygen in the liquid phase and that's what only matters. That eight percent is what matters for the liquid phase reaction. Now when you use pure oxygen, I want you to remember this part because it's going to play a very important role. When you use pure oxygen you can stay more than five times oxygen is dissolved in the liquid phase. That's why a lot of industries are using pure oxygen in their liquid phase reactions. Now, if you increase the pressure. This was the ambient condition.
5:45
So if you increase the pressure 100 pound, you're looking at more than 100 parts per million of oxygen in the process. It's very simple example if you look at oxygen to water they sell in the market. It's a bottles and when they make it they make under pressure. Higher than atmospheric pressures. So you have a lot of oxygen in the bottle, but then when you open it, it's ambient pressure so you lose most of oxygen, which is in there. And this collapse in water, you don't have that benefit of
6:15
having more oxygen, drinking oxygen and a lot of benefits by the way high oxygenated water system. When you look at here high DO [dissolved oxygen] level means high reaction allowing higher production. We'll talk about this. Most of applications are fish farming, fermentation for biotech industry, pharmaceutical industry, wastewater treatment, liquid systems, chemical reactions. Almost all these places, I myself have done a lot of work in these areas and I have patents in those areas too.
6:48
If you look at the graphical view of that what we just discussed, this is at atmospheric pressure and 60 Fahrenheit. You can look at actual concentration ppm [parts per million] versus increasing pressure. You can see higher dissolve oxygen level. Dissolved oxygen is referred to as DO, by the way. And if you have atmospheric pressure and you can look at the function of temperature - higher the temperature, lower the oxygen concentration, lower the DO level in the liquid phase. Why pure oxygen?
7:22
Saturation of oxygen in water is five times more in when you use pure oxygen. Air has only 21 percent oxygen and as you know the total pressure is a function of partial pressures of component A, B, C, and D, whatever components you have it and that's what reduces the partial pressure of oxygen to the lower level. That's where you get eight ppm. With increased oxygen supplies that's when you increase the mixed liquor.
7:50
Those who are in the wastewater treatment, they will know the term in aerator basin. And in fact, you will see some numbers that your significant increase in mixed liquor. A volatile suspended solids, you're going to find that when you use pure oxygen. Now this is another interesting aspect. Total gas flow through the wastewater with your oxygen is 12-100 times lower than air. You realize what it means as to by having lot less inert, lot less
8:22
volatile organic chemicals coming out of the wastewater and that's why oxygen is a preferred approach in the industry. Here are some of the technical terms as to how you check the efficiency of oxygenation. The most critical part is to - sorry - Most critical part is what you look at here as to what the factors affects the oxygen utilization in the wastewater: Depth of water, how deep you are putting in oxygen system. Water temperature, flow rate of the water, oxygen concentration and targeted.
8:53
When you look at efficiency of oxygen. This is just a simple calculation to show you that per meter or per every three foot, you'll have 16 percent oxygen utilization. So you can calculate from there. Close to 90-100 percent oxygen utilization. You can easily calculate as though you're looking at 10-12 feet depth. That's what you're looking at where you want to use oxygen. These are comparison in the market, you have system but I refer to BIOX. So this is the hose that has - it's made
9:29
up of EPDM [ethylene propylene diene monomer] plastic material. It has a less than 10 micron size holes here and interestingly when you use that in a use the holes open up has a flapper on and when you stop using oxygen the flapper closes. So this hose does not require any maintenance. In Europe, they have used widely for 15-20 years. The quality will stay the same. It's a significant impact on efficiency and also maintenance part. You don't have to replace this. It works great.
10:03
So that's the BIOX system. This is air diffusion system. You might have heard that term and surface aerators. Look at the oxygen transfer efficiency. Huge change. Looked at the transfer rate per kilowatt hour. This was calculated because you have already oxygen made in the air separation unit and these are in air diffuser. Look that makes liqueur volatile suspended solids, as we mentioned before, and total gas flow - significant difference. These are actual data by the way from the plant.
10:37
And you can calculate. You can see these information too and so this again we saw the chart before, BIOX system, which you look a system like this, it depends on the depth and the temperature both important parameters. Depth and the temperature and the flow and also the money is highest in the warm temperature, when efficiency is lowest. I refer to a few minutes ago as to depth is very critical in the efficiency of oxygen transfer in the liquid phase.
11:12
These are some SOT, that is standard oxygen transfer efficiencies. You can look at oxyben flow and efficiencies - lower the flow much better efficiency because you have bubble size 10 micron size lower the bubble size more the surface area easier it is to dissolve and also you're looking at bubble surface doubles per unit volume and diameter is halved. This is very important critical parameter here and deviations are source of lower efficiency.
11:45
People use air diffusion in the industry or set up a bit of time, air diffuses, those membranes holds, they open up. As bubble size gets bigger you lose efficiency. Here you don't expect anything to happen like that. This is the comparison of various applications in the wastewater treatment area, how they're done. Investment extremely low. Aerators is very high. Efficiency very high. Power consumption, there is no electricity involved here, by the way.
12:16
When you supply oxygen, you have a tank on site. That tank holds a liquid oxygen. You vaporize the oxygen. Oxygen vaporizes from liquid to gaseous phase close to 600-700 times. Now you have pressurized oxygen. Then you use the pressurized oxygen go into the tubes and it does what you have to do it. In this places, there's nothing like that. There is a power consumption here because you have rotating devices there. Same thing in aerators also. Maintenance, as I mentioned, significantly low.
12:52
Flexibility again here you have ability to adjust the oxygen flow to adjust DO level depending on the needs. You have a heavy BOD requirement - biological oxygen demand - COD - chemical oxygen demand - and you can adjust your oxygen flow to get the desired DO level and make sure you don't have any anaerobic condition. And these are some of the parameters. We just summarized those, low investment, high oxygen efficiency, no energy consumption here at the use point there's no consumption, easy to
13:29
operate, maintenance free, immediately ready for start up, high availability, noiseless, no other problem. When you pass through some wastewater treatment plant, you will see a lot of orders. What that indicates is aerobic condition happening there. You don't have enough oxygen. Dissolved oxygen level is low. I was in Kansas City last week and I was passing through a highway. There was terrible smell. So we went to the wastewater treatment plant and told them
13:55
what's going on there and we learned a lot from that. This is something interesting whenever we see the odor problem now we can tell that say, " Hey, by the way, is an aerobic condition. DO is not enough. That's all it comes down to it." This is another interesting approach. When you started talking about the smell, normally in the wastewater treatment plant you have a collection facing. Water comes from all different areas, industry, homes, and all these different areas, it comes at one point.
14:27
And that is a collection basin. Now, you will see that in this area it's very easy to go to an aerobic condition, means deficiency of oxygen, and most of time smell comes from this area. So what are the patents when I had in 2001 was basically put oxygen in that place and maintained that positive level of dissolved oxygen. Smell went away; totally went away and the funny thing was, at this particular facility, it is in the middle of
14:58
residential area and before they had problem where the residents in the neighborhood will call, "what's going on with a plant? How come it smells so bad?" And they were going to do major expansion. We were called in and we turned the system and we put the system and now there are so much used to that if there's a smell again they say, "did you shut that oxygen down?" [Laugh] So they these are neighbors and they're telling that make sure the oxygen. That's what they were say.
15:30
I think it shows a very simple solution, simple approach. Other alternatives that cause quite a few millions of dollars; this is a very simple approach, even less than a million dollars. You're talking about depends on the size of the system and things like that. This is what you solve for. This system is the actual installation. This is a one of the companies where you see that you have a recirculating pump and this from oxygen
15:56
is injected into the pump, is diffusion diffused in the water, and all smells and everything went away. This is a water plant, huge plant. You don't see any aerators here. These are basically all with BIOX hose, all with this system. 15-20 years no maintenance, nothing, and I personally have seen this. This is in Germany and now in the U.S., we have also number of operations here. So this was a drawing of that. As we just saw, three approaches BIOX system [left], this
16:35
is oxygenator [middle], and this is supplying liquid oxygen [right] to the system. When you use this and put this hose into the water and supply pure oxygen or air, you can see bubble size depends on the flow of oxygen or air you're going to control the bubble size. Smaller the bubble size, easier it is for the gas oxygen or air to dissolve. Typically, when you look at that system, you go through evaluation processes and you find out as to what's needed for the system and things like that.
17:20
When you look at the BIOX system, depending on the flow and oxygen requirement, you have a framework. You put those frames in the water, stop the aerators, and put oxygen through that and that works great. Advantage of wastewater oxygen used in wastewater treatment plant, you're looking at a significantly reduce stripping and foaming. This is very critical part. As you see with aerators, you want to get more oxygen in the liquid, you're gonna put more air, more air, more air.
17:56
Same thing with the fermentation, other process too. When you put more air you put in a lot of inert a lot of nitrogen. When you put a lot of nitrogen there, it's gonna form up. It's going to create the form because you have a lot of turbulence and you're gonna have volatile organics material, which in there it's gonna come with nitrogen and that's referred to as as a VOC [volatile organic carbon]. When you use oxygen as you saw before, you reduce the
18:19
total flow of air, total of flow of oxygen going in the system. When you do that, you're directly impacting. This is no-no! When you have a high VOC, it is a problem to the community and you want to reduce as much as you can, so EPA [environmental protection agency] will tell them to control the VOC level and you ought to do something. This becomes very important tool, oxygen for control of VOC. Improved sludge settling, reduce plant operating cost, reduce electricity use.
18:47
Now, we saw that you don't need any electricity to supply DO. When they have an outage of electricity the system is still working unlike what they have today. Interesting part, now we saw the basic principle how oxygen used in the liquid phase. These are actual installation. Here is a fish. If you feel familiar with that normally you're looking at density up close to a hundred kilogram per cubic meter and when your large quantity of fish and area when you feed them they're really running around.
19:29
Why are they running around? The primary reason of running around, they're looking for oxygen. The gills open up. They pull air through mouth and a separate oxygen through the membrane and get oxygen for consumption purpose. Now, we put pure oxygen in the system and we found that dissolved oxygen was sufficient and fish was extremely happy. They have plenty of oxygen available, so they're getting fatter and fatter. Their weight was increasing big-time and I'll show you numbers a minute.
20:00
That was a big impact on a fish farming. Benefits in the fish farming. Desired DO level. From 12 midnight to 4 a.m. that's the big time fish is running around and looking for oxygen. When we did that, we reduced the fish inventory loss. They normally use what they call paddlewheeler or tractor to supply oxygen or supply oxygen through air. When we did pure oxygen, they didn't need anything like that. When you do that oxygen, you really you saw the power saving because you don't need more
20:42
electricity, capital investment tractors not needed and basically there was no need for any tractors, anything like this. These are in intangibles. Well you are looking at the higher DO level. Healthy fish; that's another one too. They stay healthy because they have plenty of oxygen when they need it. Better food conversion ratio resulting in improve efficiency in food use. Faster fish growth as I mentioned to you before about the ability to hold fish at one spot and control pond.
21:15
Fish trying to be in one place if there is oxygen available, all of them will go there. So significant reduction on DO, if you don't have proper oxygen, they will starve to death. Much higher population density. Reduced maintenance cost for paddle wheelers. Reduce fish loss during socking and high temperature due to DO level. Again, lot of things depend on DO level and you can see what your oxygen injected into the system, we were able to overcome that.
21:46
There are some patterns related to those areas. These are environmental industry patents. This is oxygenation water. These are some other areas we have worked on. High temperature application, again. There are some of the patents also. Other aspect is pH level. In the wastewater or the water stream, what you're looking at is to CO2 helps you to control pH level. Normally, the approach what they take is use acid, sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. That's a very strong acid.
22:26
It comes with safety aspect and things like that. When you use CO2 with water it makes a weak acid, carbonic acid, and this CO2 is reducing pH value simply by injecting into the system and if you look at the reduction, change in the pH value what you take hydrochloric acid and carbonic acid it runs a parallel, similar approach on that, but it's a lot safer to handle, easier to work with. The response will overshoot the pH resulting a low pH excursion compared to strong mineral acids.
23:06
Industry uses this approach also. When you use a strong acid like hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, all these things, when you overshoot the pH by putting more sulfuric acid in case you with a mistake then you are running into the pH level issues. Handling, PPE [personal protective equipment] tools, the safety tools, the risk of employees exposure to burns, routine replacement of acid pumps. These are standard in the industry what happens when you use the stronger acid.
23:38
When you use the CO2 for pH control, there is no overshooting. There is a very weak acid. No operator handling or risk. It's directly injected into the system. Pressure is already there, so you don't need a part to pump anything. No additional maintenance cost. So with the acid and CO2 cost per year, if you look at these two there's a big difference. Impact: Eliminate notice of violations and fined because if you don't meet the requirement EPA fines you big time and
24:07
you basically are eliminating the need for that. Loss time accident, liability issues, reduce maintenance, and direct cost savings. These are benefits when you go with using CO2 for pH control. This is system where they're using CO2 for pH control. Lower pH of an effluent stream prior to discharge and these are areas where you you find that CO2 being used for industry to clean tank and chemical industry when chemically higher plant pH value
24:38
facility with high pH value, pulp and paper process water, because it's a alkaline solution. Textile manufacturing effluent wastewater, concrete or mining operations with lime and discharge. These are potential application for CO2 in a pH control. Drinking water, that's another area as to how to sterilize the water or how to make water compatible for consumption purpose. Ozone [O3] is used frequently. I know in the third-world country, other countries, this
25:16
is a big deal as to try to provide them clean water. Ozone is again, it could be generated on site. All it needs is oxygen [O2] and some of the equipment, which allows you to convert O2 into O3 ozone and ozone kills organisms, sterilizating agent also, kills organism, things like that. That's used in industry too. Now few other things I want to touch on. This is all an oxygen and open for questions in a few minutes, but here is something interesting what Technology Services
25:57
Incorporated has developed. This is the range. You're seeing this. It's basically, a video will tell you a lot more about so let's go to the video in a minute. What you're looking at wide application or basically in high-pressure gas cylinders most liquid nitrogen, oxygen, argon, welding gases, specialty distribution, anti-bacterial environment for hospitals, medical centers, pharma, biotech industry, for EPA Research Lab also and for seniors operating the medical oxygen gases.
26:38
This is where this particular tool is used. You can see the area, this portion on the top is that for the cap. I'm sure most of you are familiar with that. This area with pins coming out, that is to open up the wheel on the cylinder. This area is to mount the oxygen or nitrogen or CO2, the valve and you can see this is for the welding gas is. There are two other things for welding gases. There are holes there, which allows you to operate welding as another tool.
27:16
This is called unidirectional, spark-free, antibacterial wrench. The brochure is here if anybody's interested in that and this is what it looks like. You just saw that. How do you play this? This is just.. Okay, this is the video on that about three minutes so four minute video. [Video voice over] Can't open the compressed gasses cap or cylinder valve? Or mount the regulator on the cylinder? Or have safety issue, or bacterial or spark issues?
27:52
Don't worry about it now as Technology Services Inc. or TSI, an innovative U.S. based company has developed a swiss army type tool for you to perform these tasks safely and with ease. This versatile tool is a patented tool and has multifunctional uses. This includes opening or closing the cylinder cap, tightening or release the valve's CGA fittings, opening only the cylinder valve, opening and closing the welding gasses cylinders, and medical gasses cylinders.
28:24
It can be antibacterial and/or spark free. On February 29th, 2008, the EPA registered five copper-containing metal alloy products. This registration allows the registrant, the Copper Development Association [or] CDA, to market these products with the claim that copper, when used in accordance with the label, kills 99.9 percent of bacteria within two hours. The Wall Street Journal dated July 27th, 2016, also released an article about increased use
28:53
of copper-based alloys in the hospitals as antibacterial tools. With this information, it is important to note that the hospitals and medical facilities, pharma and biotech facilities, can greatly benefit from the antibacterial feature of this tool. The following video shows the functions that the multipurpose, spark-free, antibacterial, unidirectional wrench can provide. As this lab employee shows, the TSI unique wrench can easily and safely open the compressed gas cylinder cap within ease.
29:25
No need to use the typical wrench, screwdriver, and hammer in case it is difficult to open the cylinder cap. In addition, enhanced safety and potential feature of spark-free and/or antibacterial makes this wrench unique, safe, and at a much more affordable cost. Mounting the regulators on the compressed gas cylinder is made much easier as simply engaging one end of the attachment with wrench shape and operate the wrench to open or tighten the regulators.
29:53
This tool works for gas regulator series 300 and 500. That includes most of the industrial maintenance cylinders [and] calibration gases except regulators that are 600 series mainly used in toxin or poisonous gases. Opening the cylinder valves is made easier by using the ratchet end of the wrench. One side of the unidirectional wrench is the ratchet disk with pins. Its special feature of being unidirectional ensures that the cylinder stem can not be
30:21
damaged by excessive torque if it was to be used for closing. As demonstrated here, the recommended method is to recess the pins of the into the grooves the cylinder valve's stem wheel and gently apply opening torque. This will open the valve. To close the cylinder valve, simply use hand. No excessive torque should be used under any circumstances. Excessive torque when opening the open valve can damage the ratchet end of the wrench.
30:50
This wrench/ratchet feature is extremely important as most of the users in the lab, pharma, or biotech companies, and/or universities that face major problems in opening the cylinder valve. Most of the Sherwood compressed cylinder valves would be easily opened with this tool. The medical gas cylinder valves can also be easily opened or closed with the larger hole on the end of the attachment arm. As performed by the operator, the medical gas valve stem is inserted in the larger hole
31:18
of the attachment and simply apply some torque and open or close the cylinder valve. As a note, the welding gas valve can be operated by using the smaller hole on the attachment arm. Its feature allows the operator to use the welding gas valves. This tool allows the user to replace a number of tools that are used in operating the compressed gas cylinders. It is available in different alloys.
31:41
For antibacterial and spark-free, TSI recommends using the tool that is made of bronze wrench and bronze attachment. Please contact TSI and own this unique patented wrench with attachment and enjoy the benefits of its features, such as ease of operation, enhanced safety and more. Quantity discounts for larger quantities of these can be discussed with a TSI representative. More capabilities of Technology Services, Inc. can be found on their website at www.tsinc-us.com.
32:30
[Sudhir] Okay This was my last slide on that. I'm open for the questions. I hope I'm ok on time. I'm okay on time? Okay any question you guys have or Brian you have any questions? I'm sorry go ahead. [audience member 1] My question is how widespread is the use of your tube oxygenator in either wastewater treatment plants or aquaculture here in the U.S.? [Sudhir] In U.S., there are a number of companies, large
33:01
corporations, are using it right now, pulp mills, chemical companies, fish hatcheries in California. There is also in Tennessee areas they have used that. I personally have worked on those areas myself. In Europe is a very wide spread. There are companies everywhere; they're using this, because it has a significant benefit as we saw about energy saving. When you saw the ease of operation in case of power outage you don't have to worry about smell or BOD/COD going up.
33:33
It works very good. It is still initial phase in U.S. even after 15-20 years because there are a lot of companies who make aerators. And they already have aerators there and our competition has also aerators with option in there and they're making big money. Why to waste that kind of money? One of the projects we looked at it's about 30 or 40 or 50 million dollar project putting several aerators and stuff like that.
33:58
This doesn't cost anywhere close to that and very easy to turn on and turn off and that kind of stuff. It's coming. You're going to see more and more of its use in the United States. Other questions? [Beth] We will take some questions from online.
34:17
[moderator] The first question I've got is: What did you do to the BIOX hose system? How does the technology reduce the electrical demand on the aerator? [Sudhir] When you use the BIOX hose system as we talked, there is no electricity needed because oxygen liquid form when it goes to vaporization stage it's about 600 times more [volume]. So you already have now. You can decide if you put the liquid tank at 200 pound or 300 pound ratio that's what
34:51
the liquid oxygen tank is when you vaporize it now here pressurized gas available. You don't need that kind of pressure in the basin. Even if you put low level this BIOX hose does not need that kind of pressure. So without any electricity you can easily inject oxygen into the system. So it basically eliminates a need for oxygen for aeration basin. I hope that answers the question. [moderator] Some questions were asked before your presentation. One is:
35:24
How does using oxygen versus air significantly reduce the smell? And the other one is: Why is water treatment about increasing aeration? [Sudhir] Very good questions. I think we covered that part but again if you look at whenever you already have aeration basin, when you have aerators that capitol is installing them and then you have your quality of water stream. which is coming in to the wastewater treatment plant. If that fluctuates that means
35:58
there's a more demand for oxygen. When you look at one of the slide, which was patent, where we show the basin. That's the first area where you're gonna see a lot of organic material coming in there the biological oxygen demand and COD is high and you don't have enough oxygen in the basin. When you don't have oxygen it makes anaerobic condition. Wo chemical called hydrogen sulfide is generated and that's what the big smell comes. So you're going to see a
36:27
lot of smell if you don't have sufficient oxygen. And I gave you example of the wastewater treatment plan located right nearby residential area where the smell was very big. This was a very reason because when you look at the source it's coming from, chemical plant or other companies or household, and all those things I mean it fluctuates and and if you are not prepared to provide sufficient dissolved oxygen level in the basin area you are going to smell big-time.
36:55
When you go to the wastewater treatment plant and if you smell that remember this part is because you have anaerobic conditions. When you put sufficient oxygen... when we saw that pure oxygen gives you five times more oxygen and dissolved phase right away it will be consumed by the organic material and the chemical reaction will take place. As long as you keep it positive dissolved oxygen level, you don't have your 45 ppm - 1 or 2 or 5 ppm just smell will go away.
37:23
That was example we saw in an East Coast and once you have positive DO, when it goes downstream now you have a stream going into further wastewater treatment plant where you have less requirement for dissolve oxygen because it's already there upstream. If it was negative aeration basin will have to work very hard and that's a typical thing what we see in the industry that they will replace the aerators or will put aerators with the oxygen injection system
37:53
in the aerators and all that stuff. It's costly installation. If you put BIOX hose in there, you don't have to worry about aerators because it allows use of pure oxygen. And interesting part is depending on the depth as you know transfer process concentration gradient you have a very high constitution at the bottom and you have low concentration oxygen will quickly travel and dissolve and so you can see that very easily it disperses
38:24
and you maintain the DO level what you need. You accomplish two things. One you didn't need electricity to do that. Second thing you don't need rotating part and the second you met your desired level of oxygen what you need, dissolved oxygen level and the most critical part, VOC - volatile organics, are reduced. Your inert coming out of the wastewater. You will see the benefit of these. People are required to use some kind of a system to capture that VOC. If you don't
38:57
meet, they put a lot of air. When they put lot of air, more VOC will come out because more turbulence and theoretically you can only dissolve so much oxygen at a given pressure and temperature. You're not going to do any magic there. So by putting more oxygen it doesn't help. A simple example, I was working with the fermentation unit where guy was using 1,000 cubic feet per hour of oxygen in there in the pilot unit and I was assigned to do the
39:22
trial we did with oxygen and I said, "air has 21 percent oxygen. So I will need only 200 cubic feet per hour of oxygen in there. I don't need 1,000 cubic feet." The researchers around me says, "Sudhir, it's not going to work. Bacteria is going to die. This is going to happen." I said, "I'm running this, alright! Give me a chance." And when I did 200 cubic feet in five minutes they were shocked. Oxygen level from the bottom to top - it was about 20 feet long vessel.
39:50
It was in short time, the DO level was very consistent. At the end, productivity for that fermentation process went up by 30 percent. The yield in the fermentation terminology is conversion of sugar into finished pharmaceutical product or biological product. That's the yield. It went up by 10 percent. It is unheard in biotech industry and pharma industry. All that because we were able to get rid of inert and increase the dissolved oxygen level, which is needed for organism
40:24
to survive. All you need is oxygen in organisms and allows them to convert sugar or glucose into desired product depending on what organism you use. You can see what happens there and an oxygen really provides an excellent solution. It's natural in there. Any other questions there? [moderator] We've got a couple. What are the cost benefits of going with oxygen for eliminating foul smell and decreasing electrical demand? Another one is: what are the other ways to control the smell?
41:05
[Sudhir] It's a wastewater treatment plant based decision on that as to what they have and what are the consumption patterns and I have to look at all that different parameters as to how much BOD/COD are coming up? What's a wastewater rate that are coming in? How much VOC issues they have? What are the foul smells issues they have? DO level of different phases. All those can be combined and electric cost. All those things combined and we will
41:34
also look at the maintenance cost and also other operating costs ,all that stuff. Once we know that we can tell that as the you're going to see a significant impact on the cost. Where we have worked the return on investment for these kind of stuff in less than three years. It's a very attractive deal to do. And question will come: how come Americans are not doing it? We are still hung up on system and somebody made a comment,
42:01
"Europe is five years ahead of U.S." That was the comment. No. I think it takes time for them to see that and there are alternatives, which are based on oxygen. Those always still use a lot of electricity. I don't want to go into that because that's a competition so I don't worry about it. Yes sir? [audience member 2] Sudhir, I was wondering if you comment on two aspects that I think are critical for why wastewater plants don't
42:25
generally adopted pure oxygen. One is the cost for the oxygen and so you're trading off the electricity costs versus the oxygen supply cost. So if you comment on that trade-off. Show that's advantageous. And then secondly, the reliability of a supply of oxygen at a certain cost. So they would have concern that they could buy it today they might be able to get a five-year contract but that twenty years from now they may or may not be able to get oxygen at the same price and so how
42:56
do you how do you get around the potential for oxygen cost to go up? [Sudhir] It's a very good question so let me answer what I've seen and what I've experienced. Depending on oxygen requirement you decide the mode of supply. You need liquid oxygen. You need on-site oxygen generation system. You need pipeline. And when you look at the pipelines, the 15-year contract is supplied but there is a fixed cost for some period of time and you get the
43:26
oxygen there. If you have liquid supply, you put the tank close to the use point and you have ability to negotiate. There are enough competition in the market that you can negotiate the price and get the price. Important aspect is the cost aspect with the oxygen cost versus electric cost. Oxygen is not just offsetting electric cost. It's offsetting maintenance cost, offsetting operating cost. A lot of changes you can see that and when I made the comment about return
43:58
investment less than three years, it's a realistic numbers. So the only aspect is you're looking at a supply system. When you can supply depending on need, depends your location. As a matter of fact, it helps you to look around because air separation plants are built quite often in different places and then as time goes more and more air supplies units are built. If there's something closer to you, the major factor in oxygen cost is
44:25
shipping cost, transportation cost. Manufacturing cost depends on electricity, what the air separation plant is using, and then liquefying. So if you have plant closer, then your transportation cost is less. So it's advantageous to the end-user. So as I say, there are a number of companies are making now... putting air separation plants different places and depends on reach. The general way they build air separation plant is they look at that major user of oxygen
45:00
and nitrogen and argon and if that justifies that they will put the plant there. Then they will make additional liquid products oxygen, nitrogen, and then they will ship it within 250-mile radius of air separation plant. That's where you got very competitive. If you are further away from 250 miles from the plant, it's a little disadvantage for air separation plant. So from marketing point of view they will build a plan closer to the use point like steal mills, or big chemical
45:29
plants, and things like that. And then, they will produce enough products that they can sell within that region and then so probably... It's a good question but I think a lot of competition in the market. You can control the oxygen cost. I hope I answer your questions also. Any other questions? Yes sir.
45:55
[audience member 2] Good talk. I just understanding using oxygen for the wastewater treatment plant you can control the odor because oxidation. But the basic mechanism I saw, the VOC, how do you sink VOC production because most the compound for the biodegredation from taking molecules, small molecules the BOC, also because the oxygen will carry over. So I thought the VOC will increase.
46:25
[Sudhir] The VOC, which is coming out of the aeration basin. Those are critical for EPA. You need certain VOC level. When you put a lot more air, a lot my inert and more VOC will come out. That will be exposed to human and that is not allowed. So you will see VOC in the liquid phase because there isn't anything coming down from there because the oxygen is five times less then total airflow so you will contain it in there. As long it doesn't come out your okay. Then CoD/BOD will be
46:55
affected with oxygen and so that goes in system. If you look at the EPA regulation BOD requirement, COD requirement and VOC coming out not in the water. Does it answer your question? [audience member 3] VOC actually still... [Sudhir] which is coming out. That's critical because it exposed to human. Same [with] hydrogen sulfide, which is in the basin, and BOC, which are exposed to human health, that's where the regulations come into play. So when you
47:28
reduce your inert velocity in the phase and you don't have that much VOC coming out. It makes a big difference and when you hydrogen sulfide when you basically produced a higher DO level and so air-sulfide reaction does not happen because there is no anaerobic condition [audience member 3] Yeah, I just saw that and I understand, because control the oxidation so less hydrogen sulfide production.
47:57
Also, the auto injection. But for the VOC, because of bioaccumulation - big molecules, small molecules - supposed VOC increase. So this my question. Do somebody do this VOC test? [Sudhir] They do it and if you look at the requirement is before you move that water away to the river something like that. They will check total suspended solid. They will look at COD, look at BOD. That's what they basically look at that and BOC is only concerned is out and I'll know that
48:38
wastewater treatment plant, they're asked to close the thing or do something with aerators because anything that's health hazard that's what EPA is worried about and this one will be in your favor because you don't have much music coming out. I hope that answers your question. Any other question here? Anybody else? Anything you have? Okay, good timing for me. [Laugh] [Beth] Okay, let's thank Sudhir again. [Applause]
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat