It is difficult to remove oil and AFFF from voluminous streams. Research has been continuously carried out to develop new technologies to be employed in this field of application with little success. Air-sparged hydrocyclone (ASH) flotation technology is a new technology developed by the University of Utah and Advanced Processing Technologies, Inc. It combines the advantages from both conventional hydrocyclones and froth floatation into a single piece of equipment and may provide a unique opportunity for the fast separation of dispersed oil from significantly large waste water streams with a proven processing capacity of about 100-600 times more than that offered by other flotation machines. A research program is proposed to DOD to investigate the feasibility for the application of the air-sparged hydrocyclone floatation technology for the removal and separation of oil and AFFF waste water. If this Phase I preliminary small-scale program is proven successful, a rather more detailed and large-scale program for both fundamental study and field testing will be proposed in Phase II.
