Cationic starches as substitute for synthetic cationic flocculants in solid-liquid separation of harbor sludge

Harbor sludge (about 25% total solid) has to be dredged to keep the waterways free. Thus, annually 1.2 million m3 of dredged material has to be cleaned. For this process, three different synthetic flocculants with optimal molar masses, ionogenities, and concentrations are added in order to get a good dewatering efficiency and shear strength of the flocs. But as synthetic flocculants bring about unwanted fish toxicity and insufficient biodegradability, this study intends to check whether these flocculants can successively be substituted by cationic starches which have already been proven to be less toxic than synthetic flocculants. Five different starch derivatives with an average degree of substitution higher than 0.5 were characterized, especially in terms of the molar mass and coil size distribution, and flocculation tests, zeta potential measurements and filtrate turbidity tests were carried out in order to create optimum flocculation conditions. The flocculation and dewatering measurements clearly show that the synthetic cationic flocculant PA (0.2 kg/tTS) can be best substituted by cationic starch KS 2 (c = 0.1 kg/tTS, Mw = 1.1 e+08). For substitution of PTAC (c = 0.3 kg/tTS) by cationic starches, we observed that a maximal dewatering efficiency is reached with an approximately 3-fold dose of KS 1 (1 kg/tTS, Mw = 8.1 e+07).