Ultrafine bubble generators,
engineered for industrial water
ARIFU designs and manufactures nanobubble generators, precision flotation units and silicon carbide membrane systems for wastewater, aquaculture and oilfield produced water. Eight series, thirty-nine models, 0.5 to 200 m³/h.
Every number on this site carries a source — including the numbers that do not flatter us. Where the evidence is thin, we say so on a page of its own.
Four product families, built to run as one process train
Most suppliers sell one box. The interesting results come from the sequence: generate the bubbles, float what they lift, separate the fines, filter to nanometre level. We make all four stages, which is why we can tell you honestly where a single stage will not be enough.
Ultrafine bubble generators
Five series — CRP, FRY, LOT, CLW, NEO — 25 models from 0.5 to 200 m³/h. Air, oxygen or ozone from the same platform. Non-rotating shear nozzle, no compressor.
Models →Precision flotation (ARFU)
Fourth-generation flotation: SiC-membrane gas generation, swirl cutting, staged injection, zero-velocity separation. 94% TSS removal at 0.18 kWh/m³.
Principle →Hypergravity swirl membrane
A 2000 g rotating field replaces gravity, cutting equipment volume for oilfield produced water and high-strength wastewater. Packaged skids, 5–200 m³/h.
Principle →SiC ceramic membranes
Tubular, flat-sheet and multi-channel elements. 20 nm and 50 nm, pH 1–14, ≥2000 LMH/bar pure-water flux, 316L housings.
Specifications →Three properties decide whether this works for you
Not "nanobubble magic" — three measurable properties. If a proposal does not address them, it is not an engineering proposal.
Buoyancy stops mattering
Rise velocity scales with the square of diameter. Shrink a 1 mm bubble a thousandfold and it rises about a million times slower — hours of residence instead of seconds. That is how oxygen reaches the bottom of a 10 m tank rather than the top two metres.
The surface carries charge
Typical zeta potential sits at −20 to −50 mV, so bubbles repel each other and stay dispersed instead of coalescing. The same charge makes them stick to fine particles and oil droplets that gravity alone will not move.
Transfer efficiency compounds
Conventional diffused aeration uses 20–30% of the oxygen it injects. Measured on a salmon farm with our equipment, oxygen transfer efficiency was 86% against 41% for the conventional system it replaced — roughly half the energy for the same dissolved oxygen.
Sources: zeta potential range and size classification per ISO 20480-1:2017 and the literature summarised on our fundamentals page; 86% vs 41% oxygen transfer efficiency from the Rostein (Norway) salmon facility measurement published by the customer; 20–30% for diffused aeration from standard wastewater aeration references.
Where it is already running
Six sectors, each with a different bottleneck. The figures below are the ones we can trace to a customer statement, an acceptance report or a published case study.
Municipal & industrial effluent
Oxygen transfer in the aeration basin, flotation ahead of the membrane. At Meister Cheese (Wisconsin) the upgrade avoided a $10 million expansion and lifted biogas output by 98%.
Produced water & mine water
200–2,000 mg/L oil in water reduced to about 10 mg/L; 2×75 m³/h mine water system accepted at 0.18 NTU and 94% TSS removal.
Ponds, cages and RAS
Bottom-layer oxygenation where the fish and the sludge actually are. Oxygen transfer efficiency 86% measured at a Norwegian land-based salmon farm.
Irrigation & greenhouse
Oxygenated irrigation water: +14% strawberry yield and −74% root-zone pathogens in the Delphy comparative trial; published yield gains elsewhere run 10–43%.
Descaling without chemicals
A slipstream device, no shutdown, no dosing. A 1 mm scale layer already costs roughly 8–10% of heat-transfer performance; the point is to stop it forming.
Lakes, rivers, reservoirs
Sediment dissolved oxygen raised from 0.5 to 4.4 mg/L at Lake Elsinore, California — its first cyanobacteria-free summer in over a decade.
How to evaluate us — or anyone else
Four questions that separate an engineering proposal from a brochure. They work on every supplier in this category, not just on us.
"What is the specific energy at my duty point?"
Not "joules per hundred million bubbles", not "% saving". Shaft power divided by flow, in kWh/m³, at your flow and your discharge pressure. Our own worked examples are on the technology page — including the one where we look worse.
"Show me the size distribution, not the mean"
A single mean diameter is not a specification. Ask for the distribution curve, the concentration in particles per mL, and which instrument produced both — then ask what that instrument cannot see.
"What will you not claim?"
A supplier with a written limits page is easier to trust than one without. Ours documents the claims in this category that do not survive scrutiny — including four unresolved scientific questions.
"Can we test on our own water first?"
Parallel testing on the same sample beats any specification table. We will tell you what the test has to measure — and what result would mean we are the wrong supplier — before you commit.
The standards picture, in one paragraph
ISO/TC 281 "Fine bubble technology" was formed in 2013 with its secretariat in Japan. It has published the ISO 20480 series — terminology (Part 1), attribute classification (Part 2) and generation methods (Part 3) — while China's GB/T 42842 series covers the same ground nationally, with Part 3 on hard-surface cleaning testing effective from 1 November 2026.
What this means commercially: you can now cite a standard number in an acceptance criterion for terminology, classification and test method. There is still no international product-performance standard for nanobubble generators — so any tender that claims "complies with ISO 20480" as a performance guarantee is using the standard in the wrong place. We track all 52 published and draft items, with status codes, on the standards page.
Send the water analysis. Get a duty point, not a brochure.
Flow rate, target parameter and a recent water report are enough for a bounded technical proposal with an operating-cost estimate. If the answer is that a nanobubble system will not pay back on your site, we will say that instead.
Contact ARIFU → See all 39 models