Effectiveness of fluidized pellet bed for removing soluble contaminants

Fluidized pellet bed (FPB) has been successfully applied in water and wastewater treatment. However, the removal mechanism of contaminants especially the soluble ones, is still unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of FPB reactor for removing soluble contaminants from synthetic wastewater. By only coagulation through jar test operation with addition of polyaluminium chloride (PACl) as primary coagulant and polyacryamide (PAM) as coagulant-aid, the removals of soluble chemical oxygen demand (COD), suspended solids (SS), total phosphorus (TP), and NH4+-N were found to be only 2.2%--7.5%, 5.7%--25.5%, and 9.9%--18.5%, respectively. However, by FPB operation under the same dosage of coagulants, these values increased to 82.7%, 37.2%, and 50%, indicating that the formation of pellets in the FPB effectively enhanced the removal of soluble contaminants. By careful comparison of the settleablility and filterability of the pollutants after coagulation, the originally soluble contaminants could be divided into three groups, namely: (i) coagulated-and-settleable, (ii) coagulated-but-nonsettleable, and (iii) uncoagulable. It was found that not only the first two groups but also a large part of the third group could be effectively removed by FPB operation. However, the mechanism for the removal of the uncoagulable pollutants by FPB operation still needs further investigation.