Coagulation behaviors and in-situ flocs characteristics of composite coagulants in cyanide-containing wastewater:Role of cationic polyelectrolyte

In this paper, composite coagulants （PFS, PFSC05, PFSC1 and PFSC5）, prepared by mixing polyferric sulfate （PFS） and cationic polyelectrolyte （CP） coagulants with different weight percent （Wv） of CP （Wp = 0%, 0.5%, 1% and 5%, respectively）, were adopted to treat cyanide-containing wastewater. PFSC5 exhibited superior coagulation performances at optimal conditions： the removal of total cyanide （TCN） and chemical oxygen demand （COD） was 95%-97% and 50%-55%, respectively. The effects of CP on the properties and structure of flocs were investigated by laser diffraction instrument and small-angle laser light scattering （SALLS）, respectively. The results show that the flocs of PFSC5 have higher growth rate, higher strength factor and lower recovery factor than other flocs. They are also much denser and more uniform owing to the higher fractal dimension （DO and less microflocs （10-100μm）. Furthermore, the dense structure of the PFSC5 flocs can be restored after shear and is more resistant to hydraulic conditions. Particularly, detailed morphology evolution of the flocs was in-situ detected by on-line particle imaging. Due to strong ionic strength in wastewater, the CP in PFSC5 plays a significant role of adsorption, while the main mechanism of CP is electrostatic patch aggregation during the PFSC05 systems.

Reversibility of the structure and dewaterability of anaerobic digested sludge

The reversibility of the structure and dewaterability of broken anaerobic digested sludge（ADS）is important to ensure the efficiency of sludge treatment or management processes.This study investigated the effect of continuous strong shear（CSS）and multipulse shear（MPS）on the zeta potential,size（median size,d（50））,mass fractal dimension（DF）,and capillary suction time（CST）of ADS aggregates.Moreover,the self-regrowth（SR）of broken ADS aggregates during slow mixing was also analyzed.The results show that raw ADS with d（50） of 56.5μm was insensitive to CSS–SR or MPS–SR,though the size slightly decreased after the breakage phase.For conditioned ADS with d（50） larger than 600μm,the breakage in small-scale surface erosion changed to large-scale fragmentation as the CSS strength increased.In most cases,after CSS or MPS,the broken ADS had a relatively more compact structure than before and d（50） is at least 200μm.The CST of the broken fragments from optimally dosed ADS increased,whereas that corresponding to overdosed ADS decreased.MPS treatment resulted in larger and more compact broken ADS fragments with a lower CST value than CSS.During the subsequent slow mixing,the broken ADS aggregates did not recover their charge,size,and dewaterability to the initial values before breakage.In addition,less than 15%self-regrowth in terms of percentage of the regrowth factor was observed in broken ADS after CSS at average velocity gradient no less than 1905.6 sec^（-1）.