When using solid reagents to treat pollutants in industrial water treatment systems, the application technology choices have been limited.
A fluidized bed reactor requires long hydraulic resident times to ensure contact and interaction with the reagents. This leads to large scale, capital intensive installations. This technology relies on mixers, blowers or agitators to keep the reagent in circulation, which adds complexity and expense to the system.
A packed bed reactor using solid reagents has a better contact rate between the water and the reagent and hence consumes a smaller footprint. This technology however can limit flow rate and requires a significant amount of pressure to pass through the packed bed. These systems also face challenges with ratholes and bridging of the media or fluid bubbles that can dramatically limit performance.
An ideal solution is one where the reagent has very high contact rates with the water to be treated, have a small footprint, no internal moving parts, low system pressure drop and no risk of bypassing the reagents.
Liberty Hydro’s proprietary Suspended Bed approach (Patent Pending) delivers just such a solution.
Liberty Hydro’s ZVI Blue™ media binds the reagent to the web of an open-celled foam substrate. The media is engineered to maximize reagent density and facilitate handling. The open-celled structure allows water to flow through the media and ensures high contact rates with the reagent at a minimum pressure drop. When placed inside a treatment vessel handling a continuous flow, the depth of media creates a Suspended Bed of reagents with high contact rates and no internal moving parts.
The Suspended Bed approach combines the best features of both Fluidized Bed and Packed Bed technologies while doing so with a compact footprint, minimal capital cost, no internal moving parts. minimal risk of reagent bypass and low system pressure requirements.
It also allows for a modular and scalable system to meet the specific pollutant control, flow rate and site requirements for each application.
Field tests have shown that ZVI Blue™ has attained among the highest levels of pollution control in the industry, Including:
| Selenium in FGD Purge Water | Below 10 ppb |
| Selenium in CCR Pond Drainage | Below 5 ppb |
| Selenium in Coal mine runoff | Below 5 ppb |
| Chromium in Nickel Mine Runoff | Below 20 ppb |
