Based on the author’s more than 35 years of experience, Particles in Water: Properties and Processes examines particles and their behavior in water systems. The book offers clear and accessible methods for characterizing a range of particles both individually and as aggregates. The author delineates the principles for understanding particle properties and shows how such information contributes to the understanding and improvement of water treatment processes, including sedimentation, flocculation, and filtration. A distillation of the author's years of experience, the book explores practical applications of fundamental principles.
Outlining the origin, nature, and properties of particles in water, the author covers particle size, transport processes, and light scattering and provides a broad outline of important techniques for particle size determination. He discusses the important topic of surface charge, which plays a major role in colloid stability and interactions between particles, with some emphasis on the role of dissolved salts. The book gives an account of particle aggregation kinetics, the form of aggregates, and aggregate strength and explores coagulation and flocculation and the modes of action of some common additives used in these processes. The book concludes with an overview of important solid-liquid separation processes and the principles on which they are based.
The author presents the material in an easily accessible style, using just enough math to be clear but not so much as to be overwhelming. Highlighting the growing importance of advanced filtration systems in water treatment, this book provides an excellent summary of the behavior of particles in water systems and in relation to the techniques designed to capture and remove them.
Particles in the Aquatic Environment
Colloidal Aspects
PARTICLE SIZE AND RELATED PROPERTIES
Particle Size and Shape
Particle Size Distributions
Particle Transport
Light Scattering and Turbidity
Measurement of Particle Size
SURFACE CHARGE
Origin of Surface Charge
The Electrical Double Layer
Electrokinetic Phenomena
COLLOID INTERACTIONS AND COLLOID STABILITY
Colloid Interactions – General Concepts
van der Waals Interaction
Electrical Double Layer Interaction
Combined Interaction – DLVO Theory
Non-DLVO Interactions
AGGREGATION KINETICS
Collision Frequency – Smoluchowski Theory
Collision Mechanisms
Form of Aggregates
Strength and Breakage of Aggregates
COAGULATION AND FLOCCULATION
Terminology
Hydrolyzing Metal Coagulants
Polymeric Flocculants
SEPARATION METHODS
Introduction
Flocculation Processes
Sedimentation
Flotation
Filtration
Biography
John Gregory
“For readers who are already familiar with the subject, or those who want to refresh their knowledge of some basics or prepare some extra slides for their environmental chemistry courses … Students, or even established researchers and practitioners, will profit from this book if the topic of particles in water is an interesting side-aspect of their work. … this book is an ideal starting point for those who are unfamiliar with the concepts of colloidal chemistry, before they move on to the more detailed and incomparably more extensive literature.”
— Thilo Hofmann, Frank von der Kammer, Department of Geosciences, Vienna University, Austria, in Angewandte Chemie, Vol. 46/20, May 2007