Coagulation and Flocculation

In water treatment, coagulation is a process that occurs when a coagulant is added to water
to "destabilize" colloidal suspensions. Conversely, flocculation involves the addition
of polymers that clump the small, destabilized particles together into larger aggregates so
that they can be more easily separated from the water. Coagulation is a chemical process
that involves neutralization of charge whereas flocculation  is a physical process and does
not involve neutralization of charge. The coagulation-flocculation process can be used as a
preliminary or intermediary step between other water or wastewater treatment processes
like filtration and sedimentation. 

Centrifugation Definition
Have you ever wondered how they separate skim milk from whole milk? Or how your washing
machine is able to get the majority of water out of your clothes? Or how, during a blood test, the
hospital is able to separate out the different pieces that make up your blood?

Well, the answer to all of these life mysteries is one and the same. Centrifugation is the process
where a mixture is separated through spinning. It is used to separate skim milk from whole milk,
water from your clothes, and blood cells from your blood plasma. Although centrifugation is
primarily used to separate mixtures, it is also used to test the effects of gravity on people and
objects. We'll delve into all of this later in the lesson, but let's start by discussing how
centrifugation works.

How Centrifugation Works

Imagine a mixture where there are two different sized particles. If you left this mixture out, over
time the larger particles would settle to the bottom. Unfortunately, this can take a long time.

Centrifugation uses a centrifuge, or a device that can rapidly spin, to speed up this process.
Imagine we put the mixture into test tubes, and those tubes into the centrifuge. The centrifuge
holds the top of the tubes, and the bottom is allowed to angle out. As it spins, the larger particles
would get flung out further, and smaller particles would stay close to the center

Why, you ask? Think about when you're driving in a car and have stuff on your dashboard. If
you take a corner too fast, all of the stuff on the dashboard falls off. This is because the objects
want to keep following their original path, even when the car turns. So the objects on your
dashboard continue going straight, even after the car turns and causes them to fall off.

So, back to our mixture. The centrifuge is spinning, but the particles in the mixture want to keep
going straight, so they get flung outward. The larger the particle, the farther it gets flung. This is
why the larger particles get flung further out than the smaller particles. So, because the particles
end up in different places in the centrifuge, your mixture gets separated.