Technology
ENVIRONMENT COMMERCE Company has been established in 1990 as a typical engineering and building private company specialized in water management field.
The company has followed up waste water treatment research and development positive trends the roots of which grow from the TGM State Institute of Water Management in Prague. ENVIRONMENT COMMERCE took over part of this institute in early 1990's.
Dynamics of the market development and still increasing demand for quality of modern technology caused company's strong orientation to market needs.
It was obvious that the only way would lead through the profound analysis of deficiencies previous waste water treatment technologies as well as of outdated construction solutions. At the same time the company made thorough selection of the most up to date solutions.
The main deficiencies regarding to construction-technology arrangement, which were needed to resolve, were as follows:
- Apportionment of outdated constructions waste water treatment plants into many blocks caused multiplication of building processes, e.g. such as excavation, concrete enforcement, cribbing, interconnection of separate parts with complicated distributing systems, which in consequence increased building expenses of the whole construction.
- Too large area of ground demanded by too expanded and complicated separate treatment units.
- High ratio of infrastructure, i.e. access drives, water and pressure air distribution system piping and electric lines, making plant to be difficult to control and monitor.
These old structures were accompanied by their ugly look, often by stench, high investment expenses, and by the general feeling of ineffective investment often with problematic and risky operation.
To the structure faults which sometimes can still be seen in some projects even today it is necessary to add a number of technological problems such as:
- Insufficient stability of the treatment process during variable hydraulic or material loading conditions.
- Often unsatisfactory treatment effect.
- Intricate maintenance and operation.
- Low rate of on-line water sample evaluating.
- Rarely applied tertiary treatment systems and therefore nearly nonexistent possibility of recycling and reusing of treated water.
- Only rare water hygienisation and high power demand of conventional waste water treatment plants.
- Too high and permanently rising sewage charges which have direct social impact on low income population. This fact contributes to the reduction of water consumption, and thanks to high fixed costs in waste water treatment plants, causes further advancement of sewage charges.
This "spiral merry-go-round" resulted in the need for finding a systematic solution leading to the reduction of investment costs and reduction of public sewage charges.
The following synthesis resulted in a new generation of structure and technology solutions which became pillars of ENVIRONMENT COMMERCE activities:
The structure technological unit has been integrated in a one tank built of reinforced concrete, in which all technological processes are going on, including monitoring, controlling, operation and waste product handling.
Separate operational areas are separated with divider walls made of reinforced concrete or plastics. Intercommunication of treatment culture media, treated water, arising sludge, and all energy channels (pressure air, electric power and water) are easy to follow and operate.
New generation of waste water treatment plants does not need complicated inner distributing piping; it has PC controlled media flows, thus handling was minimized, and the operation became absolutely dependable.
Biological treatment can be arranged according to the need either as one or two stage combined process, thus the process stability is increased. The use of solid bio-culture supports within the activation system increases treatment effect, improves separation of activated sludge, and enhances self-regulating properties of waste water treatment plants. Everything is done with a goal to enhance treatment process while making it simpler, reduce dependability on continuous checking, and prolong operating reliability and lifetime of technological units of waste water treatment plants.
The underground part of the structure is built of monolithic reinforced high-quality concrete while the aeration system itself is made of stainless steel, and it is completed with silicon diffusers. The overground part of the structure is mostly designed as a space glassed pavilion built of aluminium or aluminium-polyurethane sandwich panels, thus the life time of applied materials is maximal. Internal and external aesthetical look of the building positively influences public apprehension of waste water treatment plants.