A new partnership aims to provide advanced Biological Emission Control Systems to organisations in the Middle East.
Odour control company Azzuro is joining forces with ACWA, a provider of air pollution control, water and wastewater solutions, in a partnership that combines the technology of the former with ACWA’s established presence in the region, to support engineering, installation and after sales.
ACWA Group managing director Gary Jackson commented: “This will bring something that no other odour control company has in the Region: World-class proven technology backed by strong on-the-ground project co-ordination to support projects locally with fabrication, customs clearance, transportation, installation, local communication and after sales.”
ACWA says it has built a reputation in the Middle East, with high-profile projects that include designing and delivering the desalination systems for the prestigious Palm Jumeirah development, and providing an advanced submerged membrane bioreactor wastewater treatment plant in Muscat, Oman, one of the largest in the world. The ACWA Group has also delivered odour control solutions to both the municipal and industrial wastewater sector and the oil, gas and petrochemical industries across the Region.
Likewise, Azzuro is keen to highlight its own “formidable track record” as a global technology leader in odour-removing biological air scrubbers for the municipal and industrial wastewater sectors and the chemical, F&B and petrochemical industries. Company CEO/President Bonno Koers commented: “We first introduced this technology in the early 1990s, and we have been able to continuously improve the technology culminating in today’s refined high performance solution. Interpretation of field data and new developments in our media have lead to unparalleled results in a broad range of applications. We have realised more than 350 systems worldwide. Our latest project in the Middle East is the enhancement works pre-aeration OCU at the Ajman wastewater treatment plant, which is already showing exceptional results.”
Ajman Project
The Ajman Sewage (Private) Company Limited (ASPCL) in the UAE has recently adopted Azzuro’s odour control technology. The original biological odour control system had been installed to treat extremely high loadings of hydrogen sulphide (H2S), but was unable to process the high concentrations involved. This meant that significant deposits of elemental sulphur developed on the synthetic media, causing it to constantly clog and reducing the system’s performance.
The operator had been forced to routinely open each of the eight reactors, remove the media packs and undertake a tedious cleaning process, an inefficient process that wasted thousands of man-hours a year. The utility therefore decided that a more capable process with higher quality media was required.
Where previously eight reactors have not been able to treat those loadings, impressively Azzuro only needs six reactors, equipped with its Spacious Wire Pac media, to meet ASPCL’s strict performance requirements.
Commissioning to exchange the old, unreliable media began in March and as of the end of September the media in five of the six reactors had been replaced. The 60-day testing process for the first bioreactor had already been undertaken and the results to date are “outstanding”, says ACWA. The system will be treating a 30,000 m3/h airflow containing contaminants averaging between 500 to 1,000 ppm – the system is fully removing up to 1,100 ppm of H2S. The entire system, once fully commissioned, is designed to remove between 800 and 1,200 kg of sulphur per day.
The bioreactor also demonstrated a remarkably fast start-up time – usually it takes around two weeks for hydrogen sulphide removal applications to reach peak performance, but soon after start-up removal at Ajman was complete and the outlet concentration dropped to zero despite substantial fluctuations in the inlet concentration. No other system on the market is able to handle such fluctuations while maintaining performance.
Azzuro’s solutions have seen deployment in a number of locations worldwide, including a Biological Odour Control System for Honolulu’s Sand Island wastewater treatment plant and emission control systems for challenging emission reductions including diesel fumes for Petrobras Oil Company in Brazil, and an odour control facility for Melbourne’s Western wastewater treatment plant in Australia.
In every case, Azzuro has proved able to cope with conditions that have defeated other systems and provide a reliable, effective answer to demanding and widely varying conditions. The level of confidence is such that process performance is guaranteed.
Conventional scrubber systems can be retrofitted with Azzuro’s high-performance media, which can result in immediate and substantial cost savings, says the firm.
Azzuro’s systems are said to offer exceptionally efficient solutions for high concentration emissions, or general odour removal with an H2S removal efficiency of up to 99.9%. Its high-performance bioreactors maintain performance during high fluctuations in concentrations and can deal with peaks up to twice the average without break-through.
The system is also claimed to be exceptionally reliable and robust, even in the harshest of hot and cold climates. It requires little or no maintenance and minimal operator input nor does it consume or need chemicals or media replacement.
Email: Azzuro@acwa.ae
Web: www.azzuro.com or www.acwa.co.uk
