DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF FLOC BREAKAGE WITH A RANDOM BREAKAGE DISTRIBUTION

The transient behavior of floc breakage in a lean, batch-stirred tank is investigated. The stochastic nature of breakage distribution (BD), which includes breakage mode (BM) and daughter-floc size distribution (DFSD), makes a deterministic approach unrealistic. The difficulty of representing BM and DFSD through deterministic probability distributions is circumvented by adopting the Monte Carlo simulation approach to determine their functional forms numerically. On the basis of the conservation of the number of primary particles, the population balance equation describing the transient behavior of the system is solved analytically. The present model involves fewer adjustable parameters than those reported in the literature, yet it is able to take account of the random feature of the breakage phenomenon and the fractal geometry of floc structure.