AQUABIOX is a bioactive media for the aerated zones of biological treatment plants. The carrier is placed into the working volume of the plant, a biofilm takes hold on its surface, and part of the microflora stays inside the system when free-floating sludge is washed out with the discharge.
AQUABIOX is a bioactive media: a carrier introduced into the aerated zone so that part of the microflora is held inside the system instead of leaving with the discharge. A biofilm fixed on the carrier stays in the aerated zone after a shock load as well, whereas free-floating sludge is washed out and recovers slowly. The steadiness of the biological process under variable and shock loads is the property for which the media is introduced.
The material works as a functional carrier for the biofilm: inside the structure it creates a surface on which the useful microflora fixes itself, stays in the working zone and takes part in treating the flow. What separates it from inert plastic media is its purpose — an engineered material meant to support the biological process under difficult operating conditions, and not merely a surface for biomass to attach to.
In an ordinary scheme the biomass lives in suspension: activated sludge is washed out of the working zone, suffers under overloads, responds to a change in the composition of the flow and recovers slowly after adverse conditions. A bioactive media adds a second form in which the biomass exists — a film fixed on the surface of the carrier, one that stays in the aerated zone whatever happens to the suspended part.
Hence what the media gives. Attached biomass works more steadily than free-floating sludge alone, and the system keeps its biological activity when the load changes. Holding the active microflora inside the structure speeds up the adaptation of the biological process and lowers the risk of a breakdown in treatment after an overload — the kind of breakdown after which a plant returns to its former discharge quality slowly.
Real sites rarely work in an ideal regime. Uneven shock loads arrive at the structures; in hotels the load swings sharply in the high season, in restaurants and cafés the flow carries fats, food residues and detergents, and in housing estates the flow follows occupancy. On older plants their own limitations are added to this, in aeration, mixing, settling, sludge carry-over and odour.
A loss of stability is recognised by a set of signs: odour, a turbid discharge, sludge carry-over, foam in the aeration tank, a sluggish biological process, slow recovery after overloads and treatment quality that differs between hours of the day and between seasons. One cause of all this is the insufficient stability of the microbial community and the poor retention of active biomass inside the system, and it is on that cause the media acts.
Replacing a treatment plant in full is not always the reasonable decision. The shell, the tanks, the pipework and part of the equipment are often still usable, while it is the biological part that runs unstably; on many sites there already stand tanks, septic tanks and old treatment structures that can be modernised technically rather than dismantled. The task is then not to install new equipment but to find out which units limit the work of the system.
Modernisation is assembled from measures known in advance: improving the aeration, replacing or tuning the blowers, improving the mixing, adding biological media, rebuilding the settling zone, setting up the recirculation, controlling the oxygen and removing excess sludge with regular servicing. A bioactive media is one element of such a set, and it answers for the biological part of the process: for the medium in which the microorganisms work, not for the hydraulics and not for the air.
A frequent mistake in operating treatment structures is to solve any problem by replacing a blower or a pump or by adding a reagent. Sometimes that helps for a while, yet it does not remove the cause. Where the matter lies in the biological process, one has to look deeper: the oxygen regime, the mixing, the sludge age, the presence of a biofilm, the hydraulics, the settling and the actual loads, each of which can limit the result whatever is added to the volume.
The media is therefore not a separate part but a piece of the engineering logic of biological treatment: the result depends on the selection, the placement, the aeration regime and the overall process scheme. The way it is applied is decided after a survey — a new plant, the modernisation of a working system, the strengthening of an aerated zone, a bioreactor or a combined solution; an order of application the same for every site does not exist here.
AQUABIOX is SOLVIA's own technological development, aimed at raising the stability of biological wastewater treatment and at modernising working treatment structures. The technical solutions connected with the media are protected within the developer's patent strategy. The composition of the material, the process parameters and the particulars of manufacture are not disclosed in open materials: that is why this account speaks of the behaviour of the biomass and of the conditions of application rather than of a formulation.
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