Introduction

Wastewater treatment process is actually the contaminated water treatment process. Wastewater

consists of a mixture of household sewerage (huge waste from sinks, household toilets,

bathrooms, and washing machines), industrial waste water, every now and then surface water

run-off, and groundwater managed to infiltrate into the sewer system. Wastewater comprises the

amount of solid matter dissolved or suspended. Basically, before discharge or reuse, the

wastewater undergoes several processes to clean it.

The coagulation and flocculation process, which is extensively used mainly due to its

compactness and cost effectiveness, is indeed the essential step in water and wastewater

treatment. The aim of coagulation / flocculation is to eliminate substances which are producing

suspended matter, microorganisms, turbidity, odor and color. Coagulation and flocculation

effectiveness strongly significantly affect overall performance of the treatment process.

Significantly increase in the overall efficiency of the coagulation stage thus appears to be a

crucial factor in improving the overall efficiency of treatment.

Coagulation is actually the process by which a particular colloidal suspension or solution is

destabilized. The coagulation key function is to counteract the various factors promoting a given

system's stability. It is attained by using suitable chemicals, the so-called coagulant agents,

usually aluminum or iron salts. Flocculation is the process by which destabilized particles are

induced so that they can come together to make contact and thus form large agglomerates that

are usually easier to separate by settling gravity. Flocculation occurs after coagulation, when

coagulation usually ends in a very short time when the solution is destabilized, while flocculation

usually takes longer than coagulation.

The process is influenced by the major operational parameters pH, surface over coagulant flow

rate and reaction time. The small-scale process in the laboratory is adapted from industrial

application, industry related to food industry, water treatment plant and others. The other

chemical process used in industries is disinfection, exchange of ions and other related processes.

There are usually two major types of coagulant chemicals: the primary coagulant that is used to

neutralize the electrical charged particles of wastewater that compel the particles to lump

together; second, the coagulant aids used to simply add density to actually slow floccs as well as

add toughness to the floccs so that they never break up during the mixing and settling. Even

though a broad range of materials are often used as coagulant aids, the flocculation process

doesn't really always have to be significantly reduced and generally used.

Polymers are widely used material having fairly regular inorganic coagulants for coagulant aids;

they are highly organic, long-chain and highly molecular. Polymers have a lot of good features.

Negative charged (anionic) polymers are generally used with the metal coagulants, while

positive charged (cationic) polymers are used either alone or in combination with iron or

aluminum coagulants to attract the solid which are suspended and incapacitate their surface

charges. Polymers are very effective when used as inorganic coagulants through a very broad

range of pHs. Alkalinity is not used by polymers and can be used at low dose levels.