Can I use a standard jar tester for work with dissolved air flotation?
Up to a point. A conventional (non-DAF) jar tester can give you an idea of what chemical types and dosages will coagulate, form a floc, remove color, and so on. But that’s where it ends. You have no way of determining how well the solids you have produced will behave in the flotation process – and that of course is a key factor in determining treated water quality. It’s just not possible to predict flotation efficiency from the appearance of the floc particles or by observing how well they settle. In fact, many times we’ve seen people doing jar tests and going in the complete opposite direction from the way they should be going for flotation, simply because they’re trying to produce a floc which would be considered “good” for conventional gravity settling. If you have DAF in the plant and you need to do jar tests, your jar tester should have DAF capability.
