Flocculation monitoring of wastewater by using impedance spectroscopy

The aim of the present work is to monitor the flocculation process using the analysis of the electric and dielectric properties. Therefore the dielectric and electrical characteristics of wastewater with different cationic polymer concentrations were investigated via the impedance spectroscopy (IS) method. Impedance measurements were carried at different concentration of cationic polymer in the frequency range from 0.1 Hz to 100 kHz. The analysis of complex permittivity spectra was described by the superposition of a power law at a low frequency related to the diffusion process and Cole-Cole relaxation behavior at high frequency. Moreover, an equivalent circuit model was developed in order to analyze the experimental data and to further investigate both processes. The variation of the parameters extracted from the equivalent circuit with the increase of cationic polymer concentrations has shown a net transition at 10 mg/l. This behavior could reflect the flocculation of dispersed particles at 10 mg/l. The findings in this work could draw new attention toward the monitoring of the coagulation-flocculation process using impedance spectroscopy and could be extended to other kinds.