Trickle media Revisited

[Vogata]

Testing BH is for us a past stage and we just refer to JR in this tread and concur. The void space media is for an end station.
I really don’t know what’s going on from day to day in the US, but have notices that the “Cactus” is talked about as something new. Here Sieves have been with us since we started in 1992. We mostly like the Germans are prone to the fully stainless steel type, but the Sieve function is the same. This is the one were running http://www.ia-products.nl/index_UK.htm not sure if you even got them in the US.

We have mechanical filtration with Vortex fall – Sieve for outdoor heavy system and just Sieve in smaller and indoors systems.
Biological have a indefinite multitude of solutions and we are at the moment on a European type of BubbleBead that is simpler in mechanical design in the typical US model, find it easier to both automate and use manually in the long run. Since they don’t fully “make our day in outdoor systems we are feeding them directly into the trickle tower contraption with marvellous and incomprehensible side effects.
Its in this last section we at the moment are modifying and trying to optimise performance and make it easier to maintain, adjust and scale.

[JasPR]

here is a shot in clear towers so that you can see the many void spaces and crashing zones for water trickle. - JR

[Vogata]

Yupp - JR looks like EPA's commonly used when we started with Nishikigoi. What type/szice are you using today?
Today the industry here mostly uses type A and B when setting up new systems.

We made our first ever bio system with ETA2 (ø100) and have worked our way downwards since on the TT we have been through all from 40 (ø40/EPA1) and down to 10. Best results so far has been with 20 and 25.

[dick benbow]

I too kept up with trickle tower technology for decades and have bags upon bags of just about every shape ever designed and put on the market. Void space is a giant factor in certain purposes as is the drip rod style of bioballs. The style used in the clarity unit is perfect for the job it does....for strictly bio performance I prefer the one inch blue drip rod style with forced air rising up against the falling water and vented out just under the drip plate as being most effective. Fine tuning the flow rate has a lot to do with both the clarifier and other TT's.....

[JasPR]

Right, these are physical characteristics we are discussing. The size of the ballasts are really about square footage of surface space for bacteria to grow on within a fixed holding container. So the number of square feet/inches of surface with a fixed cubic yard or meter has the advantage for biofilm size potential. But this is a one dimension analysis.
This is because measuring a single media piece does not extrapolate to a growing surface when they are packed together. In fact if they pack tightly, valuable surface space is lost. In addition, these can be zones of organic trapping and actually counter productive to the nitrification surface and process. Over time some media start with greater surface than others but with time become actually significantly small in growable surface area than the former looser media.
But we are now talking secondary stage nitrification in most of these applications ( exceptional pre filtration) and the focus is specifically on foam fractionation for turbulence. The clarity unit is an elegant design in this regard. - JR

[Vogata]

Maybe it’s just my poor English, brain capacity or a bad combination of both.

The way I read your comment you don’t believe that we have more to gain by trying out type A or B even if they are better on void and bridging than the current one?

[Vogata]

This where or conclusion also when testing with K1 I such layout years ago. They really belong below the surface in a "boiling" soup system as we call it over here.

We are again back to the next step, where there did the test to get to the pall rings. The issue now is shall we move "forward" on the media when we are trying to move forward on the flow adjustment theories in practice (real setups)?