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The quarries on the bank of Zhuoshui River adopt the wet approach of crushing, washing and screening gravels and sands to different diameters for construction materials, as wastewater is typically filled with 2μm to 65μm fine particles that the concentration of suspended solids can reach as high as tens of thousands milligrams per liter. According to the settlement theory, a sedimentation pool with a sufficiently low overflow rate is required for precipitating solids from the wastewater, or else, chemical must be added to accelerate the process. The pool must have an on-line treatment of processing at least 150mg/L of suspended solids to meet the regulation for discharge water quality. The dosed sludge is classified as industrial waste, not suitable for recycling, and the treated wastewater will be discharged instead of recycled if it is qualified of the standard for discharge, that it is such a waste of resource. Through inquiry, it is known that the quarries on the bank of Zhuoshui River have disclosed their water pollution control permit, allowing the quality of wastewater controlled at a concentration of 12,600mg/L to 70,000mg/L and a overflow rate of sedimentation pool at 0.13m3/m2.hr to 1.94 m3/m2.hr (without the benefit of using inclined plate or tube). The literature showed that when the initial concentration of viscous fine particles exceeded 13,770mg/L to 25,000mg/L, these particles would gradually conglomerate into floccules during the sedimentation process to cause a clear-muddy boundary. For conglomerate of 10μm equivalent diameter, a single particle’s sedimentation rate in theory is 0.36m/hr. Based on this information, the on-line overflow rate of sedimentation pool without additional chemical treatment can be evaluated that the result showed the overflow rate of half of quarry facilities was too high to yield poor recycled water quality after treatment. In this study, when observing the sedimentation of wastewater treatment with concentration of 60,883mg/L to 114,000mg/L, it showed a clear-muddy boundary in 20 minutes into the sedimentation process, that 71% to 89.7% of clear supernatant could be obtained after 2 hours. With reference to the phenomenon of density current in reservoir, a hypothetical operation through several sessions of vertical wastewater injection into a ground-based sedimentation pool was suggested, where the interval of non-water injection (off-line) time could allow effective separation of clear and muddy water. Also, wastewater injection in sessions could combine the function of sedimentation, concentration and recycling into one single pool (tank). The above-mentioned hypothetical approach of vertical wastewater injection in a ground-based sedimentation pool divided over several sessions could maximize the precipitation time to separate clear and muddy water. If wastewater without additional chemical were screened by such method, along with ground-level horizontal concentration pool or drying bed, it was no longer necessary to set up a large area of flat-bed flowing sedimentation pool. It would be a very economically optimal method to effectively and conveniently utilize water resource, which not only reduce the produce of industrial waste, but also effectively use the natural earthly stone materials and water resource.
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