I am working with sludge treatment by dewatering strategy. After dewatering I found increase in total suspended solids and total organic carbon. However, when i cross refereed literature i got theoretical relationship between TOC and COD but not with total suspended solids. On this bases kindly give some suggestion for justifying my results.
Thank you
Total suspended solids (TSS) involves measuring weight of particulates in a certain volume of sample. If I understand correctly, sludge dewatering process gets rid of the water from sludge, thereby increases solids/particulates. If you are measuring TSS before and after dewatering for the same volume of sludge, you will likely see an increase in TSS after dewatering.
Regarding TOC, are you measuring it in the soluble phase of your sludge samples?
Generally TOC and COD are used as indirect measure of organic contents, whereas, TSS is a measure of particulates, which might include both organic and inorganic. That could explain why such relationships are not used.
Hanna Hamid thank you ...I am measuring the TOC in the soluble phase, exactly to know amount of pollutant that are removed after dewatering so i am wondering if i can relate TOC and TSS in terms of pollutant removal.
Since TSS contains both VSS and Mineral Matter it will be very difficult to make a ratio between TOC and TSS. For the VSS fraction alone though i should be possible to find , but again the ratio here will be dependant on you sludge Treatment - Essentially the more stabilized the less Carbon left i.e well Digested sludge will have a COD:VSS ratio of only 1.416 which mean that TOC to VSS in this case will be approx 0.4. If we again assume a well digested sludge you VSS% in TSS will be approx 45% so the TOC to TSS ratio must then be approx 0.18
I agree with Kim Helleshoej Soerensen . It would be possible to relate VSS with TOC, but such relationship would be highly dependent on the source or sludge, type of treatment etc. Also from your question, seems you are doing sludge dewatering only, not sludge digestion (e.g., aerobic or anaerobic digestion). Therefore, VSS and TOC relationship derived for digested sludge might not be directly applicable to you.
Abiram Karanam Rathankumar I am assuming by pollutant you mean the organic matter (i.e., COD).If you are interested to know whether sludge dewatering is removing/changing organic content of sludge, you can determined the total COD of sludge before treatment, total COD after treatment and COD of the liquid that has been separated by dewatering process and perform a mass balance.
Kim Helleshoej Soerensen thank you for the response, its is very informative Hanna Hamid tha idea of mass balance is interesting I try to perform that experiment thank you
As such relation between total organic carbon T.O.C and total suspended solids T.S.S can not be established.
Even if attempt are made to correlate, it shall be valid only for that particular situation.
hope this link is useful
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/.../toc-total-organic-carbon
regards
From the experimental procedure of both TOC and TSS you can deduce that there is no relation between them.
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