Fusion Series from Clarus Environmental helps meet secondary treatment standards

Fusion Series from Clarus Environmental helps meet secondary treatment standards
Courtney Leghart, right, former product line manager for Clarus Environmental, discusses the Fusion Series treatment system with WWETT Show attendees. The system combines elements of anaerobic and aerobic digestion to provide secondary wastewater treatment. (Photo by Craig Mandli)

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Increasingly stringent environmental regulations, especially around bodies of water and other sensitive areas, often call for a little extra treatment help. Clarus Environmental designed the company’s new Fusion Series systems to combine the best elements of anaerobic and aerobic digestion for additional wastewater treatment. The system was on display in the company’s booth at the 2016 Water & Wastewater Equipment, Treatment & Transport Show.

According to the maker, the system readily and consistently meets the secondary treatment standards of 9 mg/L CBOD5 and 9 mg/L TSS. Because the Fusion is equipped with built-in pretreatment, no additional septic tank is required.

“The Fusion is going to be a fit where secondary treatment regulations are mandated by a county health department,” says Susan Vandyke, marketing coordinator for Clarus Environmental. “It is a product that would take the place of an existing system to help produce an even cleaner effluent.”

Being a relatively new technology, operators and installers from several wastewater treatment industries came to the Clarus booth to learn more. “People wanted to know how the flow of effluent works, and how we avoid freeze issues,” says Courtney Leghart, former product line manager for Clarus Environmental. “There was a lot of interest in the unit.”

The system’s two types of media provide a stable environment to ensure that strong bacterial colonies remain even after high-flow events that may impede the performance of a normal septic tank, according to company representatives.

The anaerobic chamber uses fixed media to improve the efficiency of traditional primary treatment, while the aerobic chamber employs suspended media in two zones to enhance secondary treatment. The upper zone provides a stable home for beneficial bacteria to colonize, while the packed lower zone provides a filtration mechanism as a sludge return process enables the efficient reduction of suspended solids in the effluent.

FOR HOMES & SMALL PLANTS

Additionally, an automatic backwash routine stirs the media with air, twice daily, to thoroughly break up accumulated solids. These solids are then returned to the sedimentation chamber. Denitrification is achieved by returning nitrified effluent to a carbon-rich anoxic environment in the first chamber.

Although wastewater constituents and flow rates can vary from day to day, the Fusion continues to perform consistently, effectively and efficiently, company reps explain. The system can even sustain low- or no-flow periods for several months with little or no disruption of effluent quality. It is available in a variety of treatment capacities, from 450 gpd to 4,000 gpd.

“It is designed for residential homes, but actually has an application for secondary treatment with smaller treatment plants when installed in series,” says Leghart. “It would take the load coming out of the plant and treat it to secondary levels, and would be more cost-efficient than adding onto the plant.”

All models up to 800 gpd are NSF Standard 40-certified to produce an effluent quality of 9 mg/L CBOD5 and 9 mg/L TSS. The Fusion’s design enables it to be installed without a pretreatment tank to accommodate sites with limited space. Effluent disposal options include conventional trenches, dosed systems, drip irrigation or disinfection with direct discharge. It requires only four pipe connections, and consumes less than 80 watts of power per day. Those factors make it a solid fit for the attendees at the WWETT Show, according to Vandyke.

“These guys at WWETT are the septic experts who recommend treatment options to the homeowner,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important that we are here. Talking with those people helps guide our technology.” 800/928-7867; www.clarusenvironmental.com.



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