An Investigation of Using Natural Material in Water Treatment

Mansour A. Salem & Qahtan A. Al-Najjar

Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Sebha University, Brack, Libya
e-mail: msalem59@hotmail.com, qafturk@yahoo.com

Abstract

This paper focuses on introducing natural new material rock as an upper layer of dual media filters. This material is locally available and its use may add to economy of water works. Such use may also improve operation and upgrade existing treatment plants besides; it may help to comply with the increasing water demands and satisfying stringent quality specification.
The rock was compared with other used materials that are anthracite (synthetic materials).
The comparison is based on many parameters such as turbidity, bacterial removal, run time of filter and operating filters at exceeding the current rate 4.9 m/hr.
To verify such objectives, experiments imply building a laboratory pilot plant that contains the same classical units of water works, i.e. coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation and filtration.
A total of 6 runs for natural raw water turbidity are conducted. Run time of these experiments amount to (17-26) hrs. The filters were operated at rate 9.8 m/hr. The results are encouraging for using filter consisting of rock and sand appears to have the best performance for the studied parameters.