In the process of sewage treatment, sludge treatment is an extremely important link. If a large amount of sludge is not properly treated, it will not only occupy a large amount of land resources, but also may cause serious pollution to the environment. Two key problems in sludge treatment, namely the difficulty in increasing the amount of sludge intake and the persistently high moisture content of sludge, have long plagued related enterprises and treatment units. In recent years, the emergence of sludge enhancers has brought new hope for solving these problems.
The Current Situation and Difficulties of Sludge Treatment
In traditional sludge treatment processes, the amount of sludge entering is often restricted by many factors. On the one hand, the inherent characteristics of sludge, such as high viscosity and complex composition, make its transportation and entry into treatment equipment extremely difficult. For instance, in the sludge produced from the treatment of some industrial wastewater, there are a large amount of organic matter, colloidal substances and microbial aggregates. These substances interweave with each other, forming a tight structure that hinders the smooth flow of sludge, resulting in a limited amount of sludge that can enter the treatment equipment each time. On the other hand, the limitations of the processing equipment itself cannot be ignored either. Common equipment such as plate and frame filter presses, when dealing with viscous and poorly fluid sludge, have a slow feeding speed and are prone to clogging, which further restricts the increase of sludge intake.
Meanwhile, the excessively high moisture content of sludge is also a prominent problem that needs to be urgently addressed. Sludge that has not been effectively treated usually has a moisture content of over 90%, which makes the sludge volume huge and increases the difficulty and cost of subsequent transportation and disposal. Take landfill disposal as an example. Sludge with a high water content will lead to a decline in the carrying capacity of the landfill site and may also seep out a large amount of sewage, causing pollution to the surrounding soil and groundwater. If incineration is adopted for disposal, the excessively high moisture content will consume a large amount of energy, increase the cost of incineration, and incomplete combustion may also produce harmful gases, which will have a negative impact on the atmospheric environment.
The magical effects of sludge enhancers
Increase the amount of sludge intake
Sludge enhancers can significantly improve the fluidity of sludge. Its unique chemical composition, such as the presence of specific surfactants and dispersants, can break the tight bonds among various substances in sludge and reduce the viscosity of sludge. When the sludge enhancer is mixed with the sludge, the surfactant molecules will adsorb on the surface of the sludge particles, changing the surface properties of the particles and weakening the interaction forces between the particles, thus making the sludge looser and easier to flow. In practical applications, after adding an appropriate amount of sludge enhancer to the sludge, the flow rate of the sludge transported through pipelines significantly increases, and the amount of sludge entering the plate and frame filter press and other treatment equipment within the same period of time increases greatly. For instance, before a certain sewage treatment plant started using this sludge enhancer, the sludge intake per batch was only 30 cubic meters. After its application, the sludge intake increased to over 50 cubic meters, a rise of more than 60%.
Reduce the moisture content of sludge
From the perspective of the principle of action, components such as the cell wall disruptor in the sludge efficiency enhancer can destroy the structure of microbial cells in the sludge. In sludge, a large amount of water is bound by microbial cells, forming bound water that is difficult to remove. Cell wall disruptors can break the cell walls and cell membranes of these microbial cells, releasing the water inside the cells and converting it into free water that is easier to separate. Meanwhile, the flocculant component in the sludge enhancer can promote the aggregation of sludge particles to form larger floc structures. These floc structures can be better filtered and squeezed during the subsequent dehydration process, thereby achieving effective separation of water from solid substances. In terms of actual treatment effects, numerous cases have shown that the use of sludge enhancers in combination with conventional equipment such as plate and frame sludge presses can reduce the moisture content of sludge from over 90% to 40%-60%. For instance, the sludge from a certain dyeing and printing factory, before the application of sludge enhancers, still had a moisture content of around 80% after traditional treatment processes. However, after the use of sludge enhancers and the optimization of the treatment procedures, the moisture content of the sludge was successfully reduced to below 50%, significantly easing the burden of subsequent disposal.
Sharing of practical application cases
A large municipal sewage treatment plant processes hundreds of thousands of tons of sewage every day, and the amount of sludge it generates is also considerable. In the previous treatment process, the problems of low sludge intake and high sludge moisture content seriously affected the treatment efficiency and cost. After the factory tried to use the sludge enhancer, the situation was greatly improved. In terms of sludge intake, originally, each plate and frame filter press required 4 hours for feeding each time, and the sludge intake was only 45 cubic meters. After using the sludge efficiency enhancer, the feeding time was shortened to 2.5 hours, and the sludge intake increased to 65 cubic meters. In terms of the moisture content of sludge, the moisture content of the treated sludge has been reduced from about 75% to about 55%. This not only enhanced the sludge treatment capacity of the factory, but also reduced the costs of subsequent transportation and landfill, achieving remarkable economic and environmental benefits.
The advantages and prospects of sludge enhancers
Compared with traditional sludge treatment methods, sludge enhancers have many obvious advantages. Firstly, in terms of the dosage of chemicals, the addition of sludge efficiency enhancers is relatively small, yet it can achieve significant effects and reduce treatment costs. Secondly, it has a low corrosive effect on equipment, which can extend the service life of the equipment and reduce the costs of equipment maintenance and replacement. In addition, as it can effectively reduce the moisture content of sludge, it lowers the pollution risk during the subsequent disposal of sludge and meets environmental protection requirements. With increasingly strict environmental protection standards and the continuous improvement of requirements for the efficiency and quality of sludge treatment, the application prospects of sludge enhancers are very broad. Whether it is municipal sewage treatment plants or sewage treatment facilities of various industrial enterprises, they are all expected to enhance the level of sludge treatment by using sludge enhancers, achieving a win-win situation of economic and environmental benefits.