چكيده لاتين :
Structural properties of activated sludge flocs were found to be sensitive to small changes in ionic strength.
This study investigates the effect of ionic strength on settling of activated sludge. Samples were taken from
activated sludge process of Ghazvin Sasan soft drink wastewater treatment plant, then treated with different
ionic strengths of KCl and CaCl2 solution, after that the turbidity of supernatant was measured. The results
indicated that low ionic strength resulted in a steeper slope of the accumulated turbidity data for both KCl and
CaCl2 as a result of a release of floc fragments and free cells into the supernatant, which did not precipitate
during the incubation period. By increasing the ionic strength, the sedimentation improved because of less
fragmentation of the sludge flocs. Also at low ionic strengths, the dissociation coefficient was high as a result
of a substantial fragmentation of the sludge flocs. The dissociation of the flocs decreased as the ionic strength
increased, resulting in a minimum of floc degradation in ionic strength between 0.006 and 0.06M.