The way from a small idea to a first-rate wastewater treatment plant…
The idea from the simplicity of wastewater treatment…
It was seven years ago that the three members of the small firm »Abwassertechnik Baumann« (Baumann Wastewater Engineering), all of them members of the Baumann family, were deliberating as to how they could make the lives of installation partners and of the operators of small wastewater treatment plants easier – both economically and technically. The idea was rapidly born of developing a wastewater treatment plant, which can be employed without great expenditure as retrofit unit both in old and also new multichamber pits. And: the cost/performance ratio had to be more than fair.
With the aid of friendly specialists and engineers as well as with some borrowed money Markus Baumann and his father, Dipl. - Ing. Dagobert Baumann, from this idea, developed the concept for a new wastewater treatment plant generation. The basis for this was provided by a technology, which had already achieved outstanding results in large scale wastewater treatment operation and which can even balance out heavy variations in loading: the SBR process.
The first prototype was created in the cellar…
On this basis, in the cellar of the Baumann family home, there now appeared the first prototype of the new type of wastewater treatment plant. The first equipment was assembled and tested in the garden pond, rebuilt and re- tested… and, somewhen or other, after many long nights and weekends in the cellar, it was finally finished: the AQUAmax. At last it was now possible to retrofit antiquated wastewater treatment plants with a modern system without extensive excavation work; at last new wastewater treatment plants could be installed and taken into service without great expenditure.
Pioneer work…
Nevertheless, what is the use of even such a good wastewater treatment plant without the “National General Technical Approval” so important in Germany? As the SBR technology used in the AQUAmax was still not described in any valid DIN standard specification, the Baumanns, in collaboration with the RWTH, carried out pioneer work. The AQUAmax was put to the acid test on various test fields, samples of the treated water and the AQUAmax technology were scrutinised... – until it was finally awarded: the German “National General Technical Approval” No. Z-55.3-53 in accordance with DIN 4261. The way towards one of the most fascinating success stories in the branch was thus free.