Physical Characteristics of Municipal Waste Water

One of the important physical characteristic of waste water is known as "total solids" content, which is composed of floating matters,settleable matters, colloidal matters, and matters in solution.

Settleable solids are those solids that will settle to the bottom of a cone-shaped container (called Imhoff cone) in a 60-minute period. Settleable solids, expressed as ml/l, are an approximate measure of the quantity of sludge that will be removed by primary sedimentation. Total solids can be further classified as suspended and filterable solids by passing a known volume of liquid through a filter. The solids content of a medium-strength waste water may be classified approximately as shown in Figure1⁽¹⁾