A New Approach To Handle Alum Sludge From Water Treatment Plants: Will Continuous Disposal of Alum Sludge Affect Wastewater Operation?

摘要

Detroit Water Treatment Plants have initiated a study of Alum sludge disposal alternatives toimprove current practice. Continuously daily disposal of alum sludge to wastewater treatmentplant is one of the alternatives. A major consideration is if there is a disruption to WWTP dailyprocess. The objectives of the study were to determine at what point if any, alum sludge disposalwould result in disruption to WWTP primary settling process, and to compare effects of the twodisposal methods (new proposed vs. current seasonal disposal) on WWTP operation. Laboratorysimulation tests were conducted. The study showed that the daily disposal has no effect onprimary sludge settling when compared with the seasonal disposal. The proposed method couldbenefit both water and wastewater operations by causing less problems compared with thecurrent disposal method to wastewater operation, and could save costs for water operationsassociated with installation of centrifuges and landfill issues.