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All About Flocculation & More
Flocculation
One of the primary processes of high quality efficient and profitable industrial wastewater treatment is flocculation.
What is Flocculation?
According to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Flocculation is defined thus: "a process of contact and adhesion whereby the particles of a dispersion form larger-size clusters."
What that means is that suspended solids or colloids (total dissolved solids aka TSS, particles too large to completely dissolve yet evenly dispersed through the solution or in this case wastewater) clump up together and form "floc" or "flocculent". We'll discuss the difference between a flocculant and flocculent at some length in other pages.
Flocculation for Industrial Wastewater Treatment
So in wastewater treatment flocculation is very useful to remove solids from the wastewater by causing them to clump together so they drop out of suspension or float to the top, for easy removal and dewatering.
After all, this is the point of industrial wastewater treatment and the entire basis for the wastewater treatment industry, to get that water back, to get the solids back, ready for reuse.
Flocculation commonly needs a kick start, in fact the term in practical terms has really come to mean "causing flocculation to happen" because very small particles stay in motion due to an electrical charge (usually a negative charge) that keeps the particles repelling each other and in suspension in your wastewater.
Kick Start Your Flocculation Process
So to kick start flocculation we use flocculants or flocculating agents to neutralize these charges so the particles can aggregate or clump up into flocculent. Even better is to encapsulate the floc (clumped together particles) with your flocculant or flocculating agent.
The addition of your flocculants causes the desired sedimentation (solids falling to the bottom) or floatation (floating to the top), for easy liquid solids separation & dewatering, the ultimate goals.
One of the most desirable characteristics of certain flocculants is their ability to form a sponge like matrix that will capture and encapsulate the suspended solids of your solution or wastewater. This characteristic is caused by both negative and positive charges within the flocculent matrix, attracting and binding to the negatively or positively charged particles. This has the added benefit of rendering your sludge low-toxic and more easily disposed of or reused.
With the right flocculant you can make your hazardous wastewater become reusable water and nonhazardous drier sludge cake.
Flocculation Conclusion
This is of course a simplified description without all the chemistry mumbo jumbo but the end result is the same, suspended solids are removed from your wastewater.
How efficiently you do this can have a major impact on your wastewater treatment process and profitability.
Check out our high performance line of flocculating agents.
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