CONDITIONING PROCESS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF FRESH ACTIVATED SLUDGE

Abstract

Fresh activated sludge in many wastewater treatment plants may be considered unhealthy due to the large amount of organic and organism content. Due to the lack of research on municipal sludge, there is an apparent scarcity of actual data. Thus, this work will focus on the characterization of fresh activated sludge. The effect of dosage of different polyelectrolytes and coagulants has been investigated at pH level in a comparative fashion that is commonly associated with fresh activated sludge. The results indicated that the cationic polyelectrolytes had significant effluence on the sludge properties, degree of flocculation and water quality. With respect to the optical analyses, it was observed that the floc sizes and densities were increased with rise concentrations of both types of cationic polyelectrolytes. It was found that the cationic CPAM-80 was the most effective chemical among other six used chemicals especially for solutions with pH near neutrality despite of the variations in feed properties of the fresh activated sludge. This polyelectrolyte gave lower turbidity, lower sludge volume index, faster zone settling rate and large floc density.

Keywords

• Polyelectrolyte
• Settling volume index
• Zone settling rate
• Floc density