Settling behaviour of pellet flocs in pelleting flocculation process: analysis through operational conditions

Pellet flocs' settling velocity is an important parameter in the pelleting flocculation blanket (PFB) process, hence, it is necessary to investigate flocs' settling behaviour to achieve the optimum operation parameters of the process. To investigate the settling behaviour of pellets under different operational conditions, a dynamic experiment was carried out to concentrate ferric flocs sludge by pelleting flocculation blanket (PFB) process with the scale of 0.5–1.2 m3/h. Under different operating conditions such as raw water concentration, polyacrylamide (PAM) dosage, up-flow rate, and agitation speed, pellet particles were sampled from different locations of the blanket in various operating stages to analyze pellet size, setting velocity, and porosity. Experimental results indicated that, when the PAM dosage increased from 0.59 mg/L to 1.18 mg/L, pellets size would flocculated from 2.25 mm to 3.52 mm with the settling velocity accelerated from 3.28 mm/s to 7.37 mm/s, while under the same up-flow rate, agitation intensity and PAM dosage, accompany with the raw water concentration increased from 216 mg/L to 840 mg/L, pellets settling velocity would improved from 6.03 mm/s to 13.6 mm/s. Under the experimental condition, along with the up-flow rate increased from 13.3 m/h to 40 m/h, pellets settling velocity would decreased from 4.39 mm/s to 3.42 mm/s due to its lower density.