Rheology Serving the Environment to Characterize Sludge from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs)

Abstract

Rheological parameters were a fundamental importance in sludge characterization, as they strongly affected almost all treatment, utilization and disposal operations, such as storage, pumping, transport and drying. This paper will present different sludge rheological parameters from wastewater treatment systems. These parameters were obtained by fitting the experimental data of various shear rates  from 0 to 100 s^-1, under a series of Total Suspended Solids (TSS) content. The temperature was maintained constant at 20  2 °C. The apparatus used was a rheostress RS600. The rheological results showed that the sludge study belonged to a non-Newtonian family. The most fitting model to describe this rheological behavior was the Ostwald of wael’s one. This research confirmed that rheological characterization was considered as a relevant tool to understand the wastewater sludge suspension behavior in order to improve wastewater treatment process operation