Spark-induced consolidation of sludge
AssigneeGeorgia Tech Research Corporation
InventorSujit Banerjee
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Exposing sludge to underwater, high-intensity sparks, to increase cake solids, provide faster settling, and increase the rate of dewatering.
Claims20
In a method of treating a suspension of particles in a fluid including the steps of (i) promoting flocculation of the particles and (ii) dewatering the flocs at a dewatering rate to form a cake with a solids content, the improvement comprising the step (iii) of exposing the suspension to a pulsed acoustic field, which step (iii) increases the dewatering rate of the flocs over that which is provided without step (iii).
In a method of treating a suspension of particles in a fluid including the steps of (i) promoting flocculation of the particles and (ii) dewatering the flocs at a dewatering rate to form a cake with a solids content, the improvement comprising the step (iii) of exposing the suspension to a pulsed acoustic field, which step (iii) increases the solids content of the cake after the step (ii) of dewatering over that which is provided without step (iii).
A method of treating sludge comprising the steps of:
- exposing the sludge to a plurality of sparks;
- promoting flocculation of the sludge;
- and
- dewatering the sludge.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.