The effect of environmental and process parameters on flocculation treatment of high dry matter swine manure with polymers

This paper reports on the effects of environmental conditions and process parameters on flocculation of high dry matter (average DM of 7.3%) swine manure with cationic polymers with 10%, 35%, and 55% charge densities (CDs). Polymer solutions prepared with hard and distilled water allowed similar suspended solids (SS) reductions in the initial 24 h. After 3–7 days at 20 °C, however, the efficiency of the hard water solutions started to decline, while the polymers made with distilled water maintained their performance for up to 10 days. The 10% CD polymer was considerably less affected than the 35% CD polymer by the age of the hard water solutions. During polymer injection, minimum velocity gradients (G) of 108 and 253 s−1 were required to maximized efficiency of the 10% and 35% CD polymer, respectively. Flocculation mixing velocities up to 84 s−1 and mixing times between 1 and 30 min had no effect on polymer efficiency. However, mixing at 22 s−1 for more than 30 min decreased SS reduction. Adding polymer in multiple injections did not improve the efficiency of medium and high CD polymers, and adversely affected that of the low CD polymer, maybe because of repeated rapid mixing cycles which ruptured the flocs. Polymer performance was not affected by operating temperature between 6 and 25 °C. These results were collected on a laboratory-scale apparatus and remain to be validated at larger scale.