Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) Systems

How dissolved air flotation works

The process is the inverse of settling. A portion of clarified effluent is saturated with air under pressure and released at the tank inlet, where it forms clouds of microbubbles. The bubbles attach to solids and grease particles, float them to the surface as a stable sludge blanket, and a skimmer removes the blanket continuously. With the integrated chemical dosing and flocculation tube on our units, coagulant and polymer conditioning happens in-line ahead of the flotation zone, and removal rates run from 90 to 99 percent on TSS and FOG when the chemistry is tuned to the stream.

Surcharges drive the payback

The economics are usually driven by surcharges rather than fines. A plant discharging over-strength effluent to a Canadian municipality pays for it, either through an industrial waste surcharge agreement in much of Ontario or through permit conditions like Metro Vancouver's Bylaw 299. Those fees scale with production and never stop. A DAF is a one-time capital cost that cuts the surcharged load at the source, and we size every unit with that payback math in view, using your actual surcharge invoice where you have one. For many food processors the system pays for itself against fees alone.

Stainless skids, ready to connect

Construction is stainless steel, and the compact skid packages arrive pre-piped and pre-wired, which keeps installation to utility connections and commissioning rather than a fabrication project on your floor. A DAF also protects whatever sits downstream: a biological system runs far more stably when the grease load is removed ahead of it, and a municipality sees a plant that holds its numbers.

Why we size from your effluent

Sizing a DAF from a brochure is guesswork. Sizing it from data takes three inputs: your peak flow rate, a lab analysis of the effluent or at minimum a description of the process producing it, and your discharge limits. Send those and we return a sized configuration, budget price and delivery timeline for your plant, anywhere in Canada, with every proposal reviewed by a process engineer first. Commissioning includes jar testing on site to lock in the coagulant and polymer recipe, and operator training is part of the startup scope, because a DAF tuned once and understood by the people running it holds its removal rates for years.