Definition
Coagulation is applicable in water treatment process, the water produced by the oil and gas industry is major in waste water streams that contain dissolved and dispersed oil with levels of high salinity.
Therefore, Coagulation plays an important role in treating this kind of water. The precipitation of colloids and ions present in the solution are by electrical charges, and additionally the colloids are destabilized by adding the opposite charged ions, this reaction obtained by chemical and electrical methods.
Coagulation Process
Coagulation is therefore a chemical process of water treatment, and is useful to treat water. The process however occurs by the net surface reduction to a level where the colloidal particles is stabilised by electrostatic repulsion that are very close, that the force holds them and allows aggregation.
A Coagulant in other words is a suitable chemical substance .This is the most accepted process for decades and is useful to destabilize the suspensions they show the effect of precipitation on inorganic species and allows their removal by filtration or sedimentation.
Therefore the most widely used Coagulants are Lime, alum and, polymers.
On adding some chemicals to water an insoluble, gelatinous, flocculent precipitation produced. In other words, this precipitate its formation and descent through the water absorb and entangle very fine suspended matter and colloidal impurities.
However, the gelatinous precipitate has the property of removing fine and colloidal particles quickly and complete plain sedimentation.
Similarly these coagulants have more advantages of removing color, odor and taste from the water.
For instance, the most commonly used coagulants:
Aluminum sulphate [Al 2. (SO4)3 18H2O]
Sodium Aluminate [Na2Al2O3 ]
Ferric Coagulants Chlorinated Copperas
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