Author(s)

Minyoung Kim, Seounghee Kim, Jinoh Kim, Sukwon Kang, Sangbong Lee

Department of Agricultural Engineering, National Academy of Agricultural Science, Rural Development Administration (RDA), Suwon, Republic of Korea.

A multilateral effort into managing nonpoint source pollution from agriculture has gotten much attention for many years. Particularly during the heavy rain season, run-off of turbid water from sloped farmlands, fallow ground and/or unmanaged uplands is deteriorated. Flocculant polymer, commonly used in wastewater treatment facilities, but now exploited to improve control of sediment turbidity by promoting flocculation of particles in construction site. This study used the flocculant polymer to control the discharge of agricultural nonpoint source pollution and focused on the understanding of how soil-water and polymer properties affect flocculation performance. Therefore, a series of flocculation experiments under different conditions was evaluated for better polymer clarification efficiency. Various factors such as flocculant dose, end-over-end inversion of a cylinder, and soil-water properties (pH, NaCl, organic matter) were studied. The effective flocculant dose that fulfilled fast settling rate was 10mg·L^-1. Additional findings included that 1) increasing pH decreased the settling rate of soil particle; 2) a positive relationship between the percentage of turbidity reduction and a level of salinity in Kaolin suspension was observed, and 3) organic matter in soil solution inhibited PAM adsorption onto soil particles, which caused the reduction of flocculation performance. The findings of this study revealed that flocculant polymer possess good results as a turbidity reducetion measure and couldfurther provide valuable information to make better decision on establishment of Best Management Practice for handling agricultural nonpoint source pollution.

Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution; Flocculation; Synthetic Polymer; Turbidity Control;Soil-Water Properties

M. Kim, S. Kim, J. Kim, S. Kang and S. Lee, "Factors affecting flocculation performance of synthetic polymer for turbidity control," Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment, Vol. 2 No. 1, 2013, pp. 16-21. doi: 10.4236/jacen.2013.21003.