Vertical whirlpools ... Pipe system
... Nozzle ... Reagent pipe ... Cleaning rivers
We have seen big and expensive sewage plants that spoil the landscape. Sewage has been refined in the developed countries for a couple of decades. On the other hand, I haven't heard that any rivers would have been cleaned. It can be their turn now.
The best way is to make compost and to fertilize plants.
Could there be a cheaper and more unnoticeable way to deal with sewage? I claim there is.
The walls of a sewage plant are solid matter: concrete, steel. In the plant presented here there are no solid walls at all. The sewage stays put and is refined without having to build any walls. The principle is the same we have seen at the doorways of supermarkets in winter when a rising air current is produced there. The air current prevents the warm air from rushing out.
In my method
rising water prevents the still dirty water from breaking out to the middle of a lake, for example,
before it has time to be refined. In my method the water is set into a revolving motion with
the help of small air bubbles.The water revolves as vertical whirlpools. There are several of
these whirlpools thereby preventing the sewage from escaping to the middle of the lake. Instead
it slowly becomes oxidized, turning into inorganic and less harmless compounds (see picture below)
such as water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen gas, unsoluble phosphates.
A mere aeration is not enough.
Before that the large particles must be filtered from the sewage. In connection with the aeration
substances that eliminate compounds enhancing eutrophication, such as phosphore for example,
must be added to the water. Furthermore, in the aeration process we must add appropriate microbes
to the water in some whirlpool to speed up the biological process.
Vertical whirlpools
Pipe system
The pipe systems are often at different depths in the water. If the difference in depth is great
you must use several different air pumps each of which has a different pressure output. The same
pipe must be placed at the same depth. For example, if A lies at 10 meters' depth, B at 20 meters
and C at 30 meters, there must be three different pumps on the same shaft of the electric motor,
one for each depth. The best distance between the pipes is the sum of pipes next to each other.
Then the whirlpool is nearest to the shape of a circle and thus uses the least energy. In the
example above the distance between B and C is about 50 meters.
The underwater pipe system surrounds the place where the sewage is discharged. In the picture above
the innermost pipe aerates the sewage without any chemicalization. It is only an air pipe and air
bubbles come out of it. Pipe A consists of two pipes on top of each other. The lower and bigger
pipe is a similar air pipe than the others but on top of it there is a smaller pipe through which
active sludge, a compound of water with a certain bacterial strain, is pumped. The bacteria attack
the biological waste and decompose it making it inorganic. The bacteria must naturally be cultured
somewhere. The bacterial strain depends on the temperature, too, not only the composition of the
sewage. In different seasons you may have to feed different bacteria into the pipe. Industrial
wastes need different kinds of bacteria than settlement wastes, and mixed wastes still different.
Pipe B embodies an air pipe and a smaller pipe on top of it through which ozone is transmitted.
Ozone decomposes those substances that the bacteria and aeration cannot. Pipe C embodies an air
pipe and a smaller pipe on top of it through which the aqueous solution of slaked lime is
transmitted. The purpose of the lime is to precipitate phosphore, which makes the water system
eutrophic, to the bottom. Perhaps ferrous sulphate and other reagents, too, are transmitted through the pipe, either
simultaneously or in succession.
The air pipes contain a large number of small holes through which the air passes into the water.
In order to get the greatest number possible of the smallest holes possible with the smallest
possible machine power, one must place appropriately shaped nozzles in the pipe's holes. My guess
for a nozzle shape is in the picture:
Nozzle
The nozzle is fastened to a hole, with a diameter of about one cm, in the pipe, and the hole's
diameter is about one mm. One can of course consider a mere air pipe, with holes bored in it, but
will such a pipe produce bubbles small enough? The suitable metal for the nozzle is copper because
it prevents the nozzle from becoming overgrown.
When a power cut stops the air pumps they cannot generate air any more. Then the leaking of air
through the pumps is stopped by closing the return of the air automatically with the help of
valves. If these power cuts occur often, one must clean the nozzles of the pipe, sometimes either
by diving or lifting the pipe to the surface. A bottom valve in the deepest point of the air pipe
can help empty the air pipe of water after a power cut. The valve would have two flaps, one is
a ball containing air. The ball would close the exhaust valve when
the water has left the air pipe.
Above you can see a cross section of the pipe system. The concrete block lies lowermost,
to which the air pipe is attached. The blocks appear at certain intervals, for example of 10 meters,
and their function is to secure the pipe in its place and in the right position. There are air nozzles
on the sides of the air pipe at certain intervals (0,2-0,5 meters). Uppermost is the reagent pipe
attached on top of the air pipe. Through the holes of the reagent pipe gush out active sludge,
ozone or a chemical reagent which the rising water catches with it and takes round, mixing the
reagents evenly in the body of the water. . .
The cleaning of big rivers
A great number of the rivers in the world are very polluted and hundreds of millions of people live
on their shores. A fast-flowing river aerates itself to a certain extent whereas a slow-flowing
river does not really become clean. From the point of view of people's health it would be important
to try to clean these rivers. After all, dirty river water spreads many contagious diseases, such
as cholera. The importance of rivers would greatly increase, also because of use of water, recreation
and fishing. The river would change from a sewer to a water pipe; more poetically expressed, from the
valley of death to the source of life. For the cleaning of rivers one can use a similar method as
presented here.
The mechanical removal of large particles is more troublesome than presented above because there
are numerous sources of refuse. One can try to take out refuse that is already there in the rivers
by nets as if fishing, but it is difficult because of the river traffic. Some kind of inclined
conveyor belt or rather a conveyor net could collect the refuse on the surface of the water and
bring it ashore. I guess there is no good solution.
On the other hand, biological and chemical waste can be destroyed through aeration, bacteria,
oxidization, and precipitation:
1. Aeration: An air pipe with holes is laid across the river along the bottom. The small air
bubbles dissolve in the water and start the biological oxidization.
2. Active sludge: Suitable bacteria are fed, with the help of air bubbles,
into the river water with pipe systems that run along the bottom of the river a short
distance from the previous place downstream.
3. Ozonification: The ozone-rich air coming from an underwater ozone pipe oxidizes especially
many industrial chemicals. Ozone resolves quickly and will not be harmful anymore.
4. Chemicalization: The nutrients and wastes, especially those containing phosphore, that are
left, are turned with the help of, for example, lime and other reagents into an indissoluble form,
and they descend to the bottom of the river. These four pipe systems probably lie along the distance
of one kilometre so that one sewage plant could treat them.
If it is a big river, thousands of kilometres long and slow-flowing, the cleaning process of the water
must be repeated several times and at intervals of a few hundred kilometres. The sand carried by the
river and the heavy river traffic may be dangerous to the pipes of the sewage plant. For motivational
reasons it is advisable to build the plant on the border of a state or province as the river enters
a new administrative district. Next Desalination
Tapani Hakonen 
The location for the refining process is usually a bay in a lake or sea, not too sloping.
The waste goes down to the bottom and stays there. Since the area needed for this process is big,
not much solid matter piles up on the bottom in a lifetime, but that can be dredged away if
necessary. In my opinion there's no need generally for dredging. From the above follows that
you can't even see the place of the refining process. It is true that the water near the shore
of the bay is dirtier than in the middle of the lake where the water is clear and clean. You
might perhaps notice, while rowing a boat, a little bubbling in certain places. But you notice
nothing from a motor boat or a sailing-boat. There is a shed on the water-front and a little
humming can be heard from there. The air- and active sludge pumps are in operation there thrusting
air, active sludge, calcium hydroxide solution and maybe ozone in precisely the right amounts
in the right places under the water. The air bubbles must be small enough. The right size of
the bubble may be in the region of 1mm3. The purpose of the air is two-fold: air must be dissolved
in the sewage to oxidize the impurities of the water and part of the air maintains the revolving
motion of the water. The suitable size of the bubble may be such that half of it is dissolved and
half keeps up the revolving motion, in other words rises to the surface of the water. The revolving
motion can be very slow, something like one hour per revolution, so that not much energy is needed
to maintain it. The water does not escape to the middle of the lake from a rotating motion,
especially when there is no wave motion. Only that amount of water goes to the middle of the lake
which comes out of the waste pipe, perhaps even less depending on evaporation. If there are high
waves, then the sewage goes faster to the middle, but the rotating motion slows it down crucially.
