We visited our client JRS Fibers in Cambridge, Minnesota where they process oat hulls for multiple industries including bakery, dairy and food and beverage. VanAire was brought in by one of our partners in the chemical industry to retrofit an existing DAF with a goal of increasing its efficiency and ROI.

After an assessment of their current system we designed an approach that preserves the main tank of the DAF while adding some key VanAire systems. Cory Hudson of VanAire tells us “We in essence removed their old, air induction system and brought in our compressed air system. In addition to that we brought in some additional breakout valves, which is our proprietary breakout valve and how we create our whitewater. Going from a low pressure, to a high pressure situation, this allows us to create a highly effective micro bubble, which allows us to grab an impressive amount of suspended solids.” He adds “we also did an injection point in the middle of the DAF. And this allowed us to get much better results than before.”

We asked Vivian Zhang, the Environmental/Project Engineer at JRS about the maintenance of the VanAire upgrades to her DAF and her response was “Maintenance is very easy. Our original set up had quite a few adjusting points, so it makes it a little bit difficult for operators to run, and it’s not as efficient.” Cory chimed in “Compare that to the VanAire system, where you have two breakout valves, pretty much we say you can set it and forget it.”

Vivian tells us that the VanAire retrofit maintenance and efficiency is “much easier, much lower maintenance on the VanAire. We’re very happy with it. It’s given us 30% savings on chemicals; $120,000 savings per year.”