More than 11,000 AEROSTRIPs aerate Copenhagen's wastewater

The AEROSTRIP strip diffusers from the Austrian company AQUACONSULT Anlagenbau GmbH are part of an enormous retrofit project of the main wastewater treatment plants in the Greater Copenhagen area. Starting in June 2022, 9,660 strip diffusers from Aquaconsult are to be installed at the region's largest wastewater treatment plants, Lynetten and Damhusåen, by May 2025, treating the wastewater of 1.4 million people. In the final expansion stage, this will mean that the entire wastewater of the Danish capital will be aerated by AEROSTRIPS. 

The success story began back in 2015 at the wastewater treatment plant in Avedøre in the south of Copenhagen: the plant, designed for 300,000 population equivalents, was already equipped with 1.600 efficient strip aerators from Traiskirchen – with great success: "Our AEROSTRIPS were able to achieve a reduction in electricity consumption of up to 40 percent compared to the existing surface diffusers, which corresponds to approx. 2,000,000 kWh per year," says Gerald Glaninger, sales manager and procurator at AQUACONSULT Anlagenbau GmbH. Due to the good experiences in Avedøre, the operating company BIOFOS A/S also relied on the Lower Austrian technology for the two larger wastewater treatment plants Lynetten and Damhusåen. It is now expected that this will result in further significant energy savings in the region. 

Both plants are recirculating basins in which the water is circulated and aerated by mammoth rotors. "But exactly in this setting our strip diffusers, which are placed directly on the ground, are a highly efficient," Glaninger explains. Studies confirmed huge energy savings from the widespread installation of strip diffusers in comparable wastewater treatment plant designs, which BIOFOS S/A's retrofit project now aims to achieve in Copenhagen as well. 

One billion Danish kroner for first subproject 

The primary goal of the project, however, is to make room for more wastewater that can be treated in shorter time. This will involve speeding up the treatment process at BIOFOS' three wastewater treatment plants - "without compromising on treatment quality," as the company emphasized at the start of the project. The metropolitan area around Copenhagen would also continue to grow, meaning that more and more wastewater would have to be treated before it is discharged into the Danish Sound. The wastewater treatment plants need to keep up with the large volumes of water in the future, more than one billion Danish kroner (over 134 million euros) is now to be invested by 2027, the contracting parties announced. In fact, a total of five project phases are to ensure that the metropolitan region's wastewater can be treated more comprehensively and efficiently by 2045. 

The three wastewater treatment plants concerned, Avedøre, Damhusåen and Lynetten, will be equipped with 11,000 AEROSTRIPS once the conversion expansion is complete. "This means that Aquaconsult's strip diffusers will in future aerate the entire wastewater of the city of Copenhagen," confirms Peter Dalgaard, project manager at Danish BioMizing, which is responsible for a large section of the mega project in Copenhagen.