Novel cake characteristics of waste-activated sludge

Breaking down the time limit constraints for conventional compression-perme ation (C-P) cell test, this work has, for the first time, experimentally ev aluated the cake characteristics of viable waste-activated sludge subject t o polyelectrolyte flocculation and to freeze/thaw treatment under a pressur e range of 25-200 kPa. There exists a threshold pressure exceeding which th e cake structure would significantly deteriorate. Also, the present biologi cal sludge is a "super-compactible'' sludge, whose compactibility is greate r than most data ever reported in open literature. The information presente d herein has implications to filter design/operation and can be used as a r eference data set for examining the existing filtration theories. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.