Structure of Crack in Thermally Dried Sludge Cake

We examined in this work the drying characteristics of wastewater sludge, considering the weight loss using an electronic balance and the morphology change of drying cake by an X-ray micro-computerized tomography scanner (micro-CT). The drying rates for sludge cake was 50-60% of the pure water test. The corresponding micro-CT images were scanned to explore the change in cake volume and development of internal crack over drying. The Otsu's method was applied to bilevel the scanned images, based on which the three-dimensional model for crack's internal structure was reconstructed. The cake porosity and the geometric factors of cracks, such as the compactness, the boundary fractal dimension, and the Sierpinski carpet fractal dimension, were evaluated. The shrinkage of cake volume and the development of internal crack occurred simultaneously. The skin layer formed by the former mechanism retards further drying. On the other hand, the internal cracks were shown to exhibit zigzagging with a noncircular cross section and fractal-like boundary, which should be able to enhance local drying. A possible role of change in crack structure on the rate of drying was discussed.