EFFECT OF INTERACTION ENERGY ON FLOC STRUCTURE

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a means for calculating the probability of finding certain possible floc structures. It is assumed that: 1. The system is in thermal equilibrium with the surroundings 2. Particle size distribution is unimodal 3. Interparticle attachments occur at the secondary minimum with magnitude of dimensionless energy equal to phi * 4. All flocs in the system have size equal to i (unimodal floc size distribution). It is evident from the experimental results that the probability of finding large locs in dense close-packed arrangements increases dramatically with increasing interaction energy. The effect of phi * on floc structure, however, reduces with decreasing aggregate size. It can also be concluded that smaller flocs are generally more dense than larger ones, an observation that is in good agreement with experimental findings.