AERZEN Performance³

PERFORMANCE³ and AERsmart - for sustainable wastewater management

The mechanical engineering company AERZEN is a renowned manufacturer of positive displacement blowers, screw compressors, and rotary lobe compressors; as well as market leader in various areas of sewage treatment technology. With special offers in the area of smart energy saving, automated solutions, and innovative product developments, AERZEN sets new standards in waste water technology.

Main branch: wastewater industry

AERZEN Blowers and Compressors are mainly used in the sewage industry. They provide the ventilation of the aeration tanks of a sewage treatment facility  and are an important engine for the biological purification process. The blowers and compressors pump compressed air into the activated sludge tank to enrich the effluent water  with oxygen. This creates aerobic conditions in the aeration tank.  Oxygen dissolves into the sewage, and contaminants and waste particles are finely dispersed. The adhesion of the oxygen bubbles to the solids  present in the sewage causes the pollutants to rise to the surface of the basin. The resulting activated sludge can easily be skimmed off and disposed of. This first step of sewage recycling is referred to as biological wastewater  purification.

High Energy Requirement in the Field of Biological Purification

The yield of the air essential for this process consumes 60% to 80% of the total energy costs of sewage treatment. Therefore, it is crucial for sewage treatment plant operators to find energy-efficient, intelligent, and maintainable solutions for this task in the treatment process. An efficient solution is to design the supply of compressed air for each load by customising blowers and compressors to suit any needs.

Here, AERZEN not only scores highly with customised offers and energy-efficient solutions, but also with product diversity that is unique in the market. With its innovative machine configuration, PERFORMANCE3, AERZEN meets the changing air processing requirements in sewage treatment plants. The concept is based on the highly variable machine portfolio of positive displacement blowers, rotary lobe compressors, and turbo compressors (AERZEN Turbo), which are connected to each other by a central control and can be switched; depending on the capacity usage of the system. In this way, AERZEN achieves energy savings of up to 30% in the area of biological sewage treatment. Thanks to the cross-linked control of the various blower types, anything from basic loads to peak loads can be handled consistently.

PERFORMANCE3 - Managing Load Changes with Ease

AERZEN has long been striving for ways to saving energy, with many years of experience working with sewage plants. The new AERZEN concept PERFORMANCE3 is based on the fact that a sewage facility  is not always equally utilised, but underlies the daily and seasonal fluctuations. For example, there are more frequent sewage flows during the summer than in winter; during the daytime, water consumption is higher than at night; etc.

By using different technologies that can be adaptively switched off or on, only the amount of energy that is really needed to process their tasks is consumed. The system always works closely to the actual air conditions. The individual components of the PERFORMANCE3 solution are each optimised for different volumetric flow ranges, and can be used or activated flexibly, individually, or in combination, depending on the oxygen  conditions in the ventilation tank. The configuration options as greatly vary as systems differ from one another.

• The positive displacement blower Delta Blower is suitable for covering the basic load of a system and is extremely efficient, especially in the lower pressure range. The Delta Blower is a robust workhorse and ideal for use in the small and medium volume flow ranges.

• The rotary lobe compressor Delta Hybrid shows the most efficient consumption at medium volume flow ranges, and can also withstand higher pressures and water columns up to 15 meters in height. This can save up to 15% in energy costs.

• The AERZEN Turbo Compressor offers optimal energy efficiency at high flow rates. It holds an air storage - a principle originally developed by NASA - and is therefore absolutely oil-free. The absence of oil is ideal for the life cycle costs due to reduced maintenance costs.

Based on the needed process air pressure in the respective application, Blowers, Hybrids and Turbos can be used individually and flexibly, as a dual or a threefold combination.
The flexible use of all three units in the compound ensures maximum energy efficiency for each individual task, thanks to consistent energy optimisation and consumption, and covering every desired control range.

AERsmart - a New Level of Control Technology

The smart control of these three components is provided by the AERsmart Compound Control System. It distributes the aeration  tasks to the individual units in such a way that light, medium and heavy loads can be processed with optimum machine performance and assembly. This way, the AERsmart controller sets the most efficient energy utilisation of the system in each phase of the ventilation.

AERsmart can do even more: energy consumption, volume flow, pressure, temperatures, and other machine data are recorded and can be communicated to a control centre and reused. This information forms the basis for analyses of trends and annual value comparisons, all directly charted out with AERsmart. Intervals of services can also be tracked. Thus fluctuations and changing demands can be made transparent and comprehensible. This not only allows a clearer outlook on future demands, but also creates more transparency about possible aging effects and machine life cycles.

An Important Step on the Way to Water 4.0

With PERFORMANCE3 model, AERsmart intelligence control, and other innovative concepts in the field of individual machine components digital communication, the company is taking a major step towards Water 4.0: setting new standards in the field of automation, sustainability, and the future viability of the sewage industry.