The engineering reference for flotation water treatment in Africa.
Design data, sizing tools and DAF systems for industrial and municipal water treatment across the continent — from a 2 m³/h packaged skid to a 1,200 m³/h high-rate cell.
What this site is
Most flotation equipment sold into Africa is specified by people who have never seen an African site. Units get sized on 20 °C European data and installed on 32 °C effluent, where they deliver a fifth less air than the design assumed. Suppliers quote one COD removal figure for every industry, when the correct answer for a brewery is half the correct answer for an abattoir. Proposals arrive without anyone asking what the discharge consent actually says.
This site exists to fix that. It publishes the design data openly — loading rates, the air-to-solids equation, air solubility corrected for temperature, per-industry influent characteristics — so that whether or not you ever buy anything from us, you can specify a flotation plant properly. We also supply the systems, from 2 to 1,200 m³/h, CIF any African port.
watertreatment.africa is part of AI-Spares, Hong Kong. We are not a manufacturer. We size the plant, specify it against your effluent and your regulator’s limits, and deliver it through vetted manufacturing partners.
The technical library
Where flotation is the right answer
DAF removes what will not settle: low-density solids, fats, oils and grease, algae, fibre, coagulated colour. If your solids settle readily and you have land, a clarifier is cheaper to run and we will tell you so. These are the streams where flotation earns its cost.
| Industry | Influent TSS | Influent FOG | Primary duty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abattoir / slaughterhouse | 800 – 3,000 mg/L | 200 – 1,500 mg/L | FOG and blood solids |
| Edible oil refining | 300 – 1,000 mg/L | 500 – 4,000 mg/L | Oil recovery |
| Poultry processing | 500 – 2,500 mg/L | 150 – 1,000 mg/L | FOG, feathers, fines |
| Tannery / leather | 1,000 – 4,000 mg/L | 100 – 800 mg/L | Solids, sulphide, chrome floc |
| Fish and seafood processing | 500 – 3,000 mg/L | 200 – 2,000 mg/L | FOG and protein recovery |
| Dairy processing | 300 – 1,500 mg/L | 100 – 800 mg/L | Fat and protein |
| Brewery | 200 – 800 mg/L | 10 – 100 mg/L | Solids before biology |
| Textile dyeing | 100 – 800 mg/L | 10 – 100 mg/L | Colour and dye floc |
| Pulp and paper | 500 – 5,000 mg/L | Low | Fibre recovery |
| Oil production / produced water | 100 – 1,000 mg/L | 300 – 2,000 mg/L | Oil-in-water removal |
| Plastic recycling (wash water) | 1,000 – 6,000 mg/L | 50 – 500 mg/L | Fines, film and label residue |
| Pharmaceutical / fine chemicals | 100 – 800 mg/L | 20 – 200 mg/L | Solids and coagulated floc |
| Municipal pretreatment | 150 – 400 mg/L | 50 – 150 mg/L | Primary clarification |
Your stream not listed? It almost certainly still falls into one of these duties — send us the analysis and we will tell you whether flotation is the right answer.
Why flotation suits African plants
Four properties of the process matter more here than they do in Europe, and they are the reason DAF keeps winning on African sites.
- It survives load-shedding. DAF is a physical process — after an outage it is back in specification within minutes. An activated sludge plant that loses aeration for a day can take weeks to rebuild its biomass. On an unreliable grid this single difference decides whether a site stays compliant.
- It matches the industrial base. Food and beverage, abattoirs, tanning and edible oil dominate African industrial effluent. All high-FOG streams. All classic flotation duties.
- It arrives prefabricated. A packaged unit needs a level slab, power and pipework — no significant civil works, which matters where construction supervision is expensive and concrete quality is uneven.
- It fits on constrained sites. A DAF does the work of a clarifier ten to twenty times its plan area. Most African industrial plants have no room for the alternative.
The honest counterweight: DAF needs continuous coagulant and polymer supply, and availability varies considerably by country. It needs an operator who can run a jar test. And it uses more energy than gravity settling. We would rather tell you that before you buy than after.
What we supply
| Class | Flow | Daily equivalent | Typical application |
|---|---|---|---|
| Packaged / skid-mounted | 2 – 150 m³/h | ~50 – 3,600 m³/d | Single industrial site pretreatment |
| High-rate / roll-flow | 200 – 1,200 m³/h | ~4,800 – 28,800 m³/d | Municipal works, WWTP upgrade, surface water |
Materials are selected against your effluent, not against a price list: carbon steel with epoxy for general duty, FRP lining or SS304 for moderately aggressive streams, SS316L where chlorides or low pH are present, duplex 2205 or 2507 for severe service such as tannery and certain mining applications. A carbon steel unit on chloride-rich tannery effluent will not survive its warranty, and quoting one is how cheap proposals become expensive projects.
Scope includes sizing and process design, chemical regime selection, the flotation unit with saturator and dosing skid, commissioning support, and delivery CIF to any African port.