{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,14]],"date-time":"2026-01-14T16:46:30Z","timestamp":1768409190874,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"13","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,3]],"date-time":"2024-07-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1719964800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Polish Ministry of Education and Science","award":["16.16.130.942"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["16.16.130.942"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Materials"],"abstract":"<jats:p>An important aspect of water treatment is removing fine-grain materials from water. Due to the properties of fine-grain materials, they are difficult to remove from water. During the sedimentation process, which takes place in settling tanks, such materials are removed. The sedimentation process is often accompanied by coagulation and flocculation processes, which form aggregates of particles (flocs) from the fine-grained material particles in a suspension (non-grainy suspension). This kind of suspension (consisting of aggregates of particles or flocs) shows a different behaviour when falling compared with classic grainy suspensions. The main goal and novelty of this article are to propose (and test) a modification of the often used Stokes\u2019 formula with the addition of fractal geometry into the calculation of the terminal velocity of free-falling particles in order to overcome Stokes\u2019 formula\u2019s limitation, thus obtaining the sedimentation process efficiency. Because of this fractal modification, it is possible to use the simple and elegant Stokes\u2019 formula in order to calculate better the terminal velocity of non-grainy particles\u2014aggregates or flocs\u2014and thus obtain the sedimentation efficiency for the whole range of suspensions, both non-grainy and grainy. The results obtained in this article show that the sedimentation process efficiency calculated by using the modified formula based on the fractal geometry morphology of particles (the proposed fractal method) describes and agrees more with the data from the experiment than the sedimentation efficiency calculated only based on particle size (classic method).<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ma17133285","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,3]],"date-time":"2024-07-03T09:23:59Z","timestamp":1719998639000},"page":"3285","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Proposal for New Method for Calculating Sedimentation Process Efficiency in Water Treatment Plants"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3014-119X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marian","family":"Bana\u015b","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Power Systems and Environmental Protection Facilities, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, AGH University of Science and Technology, Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5317-0191","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bart\u0142omiej","family":"Hilger","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Power Systems and Environmental Protection Facilities, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, AGH University of Science and Technology, Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"1163","article-title":"Lamella Sedimentation\u2014The State of Art and Directions of Development","volume":"25","author":"Kowalski","year":"2004","journal-title":"In\u017cynieria Chem. 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