Experimental study and numerical simulation of the sludge concentration in a sedimentation tank

Sedimentation tanks and clarifiers play a significant role in an active sludge system, and the efficiency of the whole system is closely related with the design and operation of the sedimentation tanks. This paper focuses on the sludge concentration in each cross-section of the sedimentation tank. We measured the sludge concentration to explore its distribution inside the tank, carried in-situ tests to research the fluid pattern and real operational rules of the sedimentation tank. We also used the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, PHOENICS 3.5, to simulate the solid-liquid two-phase fluid inside the tank and describe the sludge concentration distribution. The numerical results indicate obviously a sludge-water interface and a compression interface inside the sedimentation tank, a stratified sedimentary region with uniform concentration and a compression region with high concentration at the bottom of the tank. Although the simulated concentrations deviated slightly from those of in-situ tests, they were still acceptable for identifying the sludge interfaces and fluid pattern inside a sedimentation tank, which are important parameters for optimizing the tank size and improving the settling efficiency.