Monitoring the oxygen transfer efficiency of full-scale aeration systems: investigation method and experimental results.

This paper reports the results of a series of off-gas tests aimed at monitoring the evolution of the oxygen transfer efficiency in an urban wastewater treatment plant (3,500 population equivalent) located in Tuscany (Italy). The tests were conducted over a 2-year period starting with the testing of the aeration system. It was found that in the absence of membrane-panel cleaning operations, the oxygen transfer efficiency under standard conditions in process water (αSOTE) dropped from 18 to 9.