The role of the flow pattern in wastewater aeration tanks

摘要

Reactor hydraulics is one of the key factors for plant performance and plant control.nThe residence time distribution is a good but limited indicator of reactor hydraulics. A morendetailed view is obtained by direct observations within the reactor. Two different techniquesn(conservative tracer, reactive tracer) are discussed to detect major anomalies in the flow fieldnof a wastewater aeration tank. Experiments with conservative tracers give valuable informationnover a very limited period of time making the analysis of the flow field difficult. On the othernhand, reactive tracers can be monitored long term which helps identifying the flow patternnprovided that a high spatial and temporal resolution of the measurements is applied.nExperimental data is used to determine the structure and the parameters of a compartmentnmodel that corresponds well with the measurements.