Selecting aerators for wastewater treatment

Aerators can be divided into two general categories: surface and submerged. This article reviews the major types within these categories and presents guidelines for evaluating the equipment. Three major factors must be considered when selecting aerators: oxygen transfer efficiency, mixing effectiveness, and operating flexibility. It is especially important to the correct interpretation of aerator evaluation results that oxygen saturation values used to estimate oxygen transfer efficiency be verified by experimental data using a given physical arrangement of aeration and basin geometry.