The lagoon digests its load instead of storing it.
Your lagoon takes everything the operation sends it, day after day, and it keeps up only while the water holds oxygen. Follow the column down and watch what changes when the oxygen runs out.
Manure arrives faster than still water can take in oxygen, so the microbes digesting it spend the supply and keep working without it, a state called anaerobic, where breakdown turns slow and sour. The meter on this water is ORP, oxidation-reduction potential, which falls below zero as the oxygen goes and keeps falling the longer the column stays without it.
soured water, the oxygen spent
the same lagoon, digesting its load
Anaerobic breakdown makes hydrogen sulfide, the gas behind the rotten-egg smell that reaches the neighbors, and it digests solids so slowly that they settle into a sludge blanket, the layer of undigested load deepening on the floor. The gas working up through the column lifts fibrous solids into a crust across the surface, which seals the water off from the air and holds the whole cycle in place.
Nanobubble oxygenation makes bubbles too small to rise, so instead of bursting at the surface within seconds they stay suspended, carrying oxygen through the upper column and holding it there. Digestion speeds up where oxygen returns, the sulfide chemistry loses the conditions it needs, and the crust thins as the gas that fed it falls away.
With the upper column held aerobic, the lagoon digests its load instead of storing it. The odor falls off, the sludge blanket stops gaining depth, and the capacity that comes back protects your freeboard, the margin between the water surface and the top of the berm, through the months when pumping down has to wait.
A working lagoon is a digester, and digestion runs on oxygen. When the load coming in outruns what still water can take in at the surface, the microbes doing the work go anaerobic, meaning they keep breaking the load down without oxygen, and that turn changes everything an operator lives with: the breakdown slows, so solids settle into a sludge blanket that eats storage capacity; the chemistry shifts, so hydrogen sulfide, the rotten-egg gas, forms and carries; and the gas working upward lifts a crust that seals the surface against the air.
Nanobubble oxygenation, oxygen in bubbles small enough to stay suspended instead of rising and bursting, carries dissolved oxygen through the upper column, holds it there, and adds nothing else, so digestion keeps pace with the load instead of banking it. The technology pages lay the mechanism out, and how we measure shows the standard every claim on this site is held to. For lagoon odor control, the same aerobic column that slows the sludge stops the smell at its source, and how it compares with surface aeration shows where each one fits.
We are looking for farms willing to help evaluate this on a working lagoon, and to publish the record either way.
These findings describe nanobubble oxygenation as a mechanism, not an Alchemal unit. Our own installations publish their records as case files as they go in.
Neighbor complaints, inspector visits, a crust that means pumping problems. A lagoon that's gone anaerobic makes itself everyone's business. You have zero patience for marketing, which suits us.
A dairy moves water every day, and the lagoon takes the alley flush and the parlor washdown along with the manure. When it sours, the odor reaches the neighbors, the crust and sludge slow the pumping you schedule around cropping, and the nutrients you count on for the fields get harder to read.
On a hog operation the lagoon is the part the neighbors notice. When it sours, the odor carries on a still evening and the complaint calls follow, and the hydrogen sulfide that builds under a crust becomes a safety matter every time you agitate or pump.
A feedlot's runoff holding pond takes a solids-heavy load off the pens, and it shows: a hardening crust, a sludge blanket that climbs, and pumping that gets harder every season. When it sours, the odor and the readings become the regulator's business along with yours.
The N-Series is one platform, sized by the volume of water it has to oxygenate rather than by the kind of operation. Lagoon work usually lands on the N4, sized for working lagoons of 1-10 acres carrying high organic loads, with staged throttling and a record built for inspection. A smaller runoff pond or a single-cell lagoon can step down the range. An assessment sizes the unit to the water and where it installs.
1
Describe the problems you are facing, and we work with you to find out whether Alchemal is the right solution for your water.
How the assessment works →2
The N-Series unit goes in at your water and gets to work: oxygen through the whole column, and sensors that let you watch the response.
The N-Series line →3
We stay with you to keep the water improving, the unit running well, and the results where you want them.
What Stewardship covers →Describe what you are seeing, and a specialist will help you determine whether Alchemal can help you fix it, before any commitment.