Grit particle characterization: Study of the settleability

Grit chambers are installed at the headworks of a water resource recovery facility (WRRF) to reduce the impact of grit particles to the equipment and processes downstream. This settling process should thus be designed and operated in an efficient way. Despite the importance of knowing settling characteristics for design and operation of grit chambers, previous grit definitions have been based only on particle size characteristics, and not on settling velocities. Thus, this study presents an evaluation of the performance of two promising settling velocity characterization methods, ViCAs and elutriation, to characterize wastewater particles in view of the design and the optimization of the efficiency of the grit removal unit.