Conditioning of waste sludge from biological wastewater treatment plant from gikil

Sludge generated in wastewater treatment processes must be treated in an adequate manner, and therefore disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. The biggest obstacle to the efficient use of sludge is the high water content, therefore the development of methods to accelerate the sludge dewatering process is particularly important. For the purposes of the research, the waste sludge created in the process of purifying ammoniaphenol wastewater in the GIKIL factory was used. Sludge conditioning was performed by adding a commercial flocculant (0.1 % solution) in combination with pyrophyllite, kaolin clay and shredded cardboard. According to earlier research, the volume of waste sludge with the addition of a suitable flocculant could be reduced by more than 5 times compared to the initial amount, leaving behind a large amount of separated water that can be returned to the process. The results show that the addition of commercial flocculant in the amount of 0.8 % gives the best results (reduction of sludge volume by 78.8 %). A lower percentage was found in samples with a mixture of flocculants with pyrophyllite (78 %) and kaolin (77.6 %), while the combination of flocculants with waste cardboard was ineffective (64.4 %). Addition of flocculant to waste sludge resulted in a decrease in specific filtration resistance (1.15x107 s2/g). A decrease in specific resistance was also observed in flocculant/kaolin clay (0.8x107 s2/g) and flocculant/cardboard (1.09x107 s2/g) samples. Sludge conditioning also resulted in a reduction of suspended solids in the neonate compared to settled raw sludge without additives.