Sludge Volume - Weight Relationships

The volume of sludge depends on two items:

#
#

water content
solids content

Furthermore, the solid content is a function of fixed and volatile soils. Therefore, the specific
gravity of all the solid matter is described by:

where
Ms
Ss
Dw
Mf
Sf
Mv
Sv

= mass of solids, kg
= overall specific gravity of solids
= density of water, kg/m3
= mass of fixed solids, kg
= specific gravity of fixed solids
= mass of volatile solids
= specific gravity of volatile solids

Thus, if one-third of the solid matter contains fixed soils at a specific gravity of 2.5 and twothirds of the solid matter consist of volatile soils with a specific gravity of 1.0, the overall
specific gravity would be:

or
Ss = 1/0.802
Ss = 1.25
Now if sludge consist of 10 % solids, i.e. 90 % water, using above equation gives:

or
Ssl= 1/0.98
Ssl = 1.02

sludge_volume.wpd

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Now volume of sludge can be computed using:

where
Vsl
Ms
Dw
Ssl
Ps

= volume of sludge, m3
= weight of dry solids, kg
= density of water, kg/m3
= specific gravity of sludge
= percent soils expressed as a decimal

Say we have 200 kg of the above sludge,

Vsl = 2 m3

sludge_volume.wpd

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