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817±824, 2000
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AbstractÐDissolved air ¯otation (DAF) is currently being received in much attention as an eective
process for solid±liquid separation in water technology. In this study, we scaled-up the DAF plant
from a pilot-scale (72 m3/day) to a full-scale (6000 m3/day) plant and the sand-¯oat type DAF was
used. The concept of maintaining equal surface loading rate into scaling-up of DAF was a proper
practice and strategy. In order to optimize the DAF plant, it was needed to determine the surface
loading rate and air dissolving tube pressure. The optimum conditions of surface loading rate and air
dissolving tube pressure were indicated in 7.5 m3/m2 day and 440 kPa from the pilot plant, respectively.
The removal eciency for TOC and UV254 from the full-scale plant was as satisfactory as those from
the pilot plant for the same surface loading rates. However, especially in ¯otation zone, the full-scale
plant performed a little bit poorer than the pilot-scale plant in turbidity and chlorophyll-a reduction:
because full-scale plant had long retention time and turbulent mixing condition during backwashing
time which might be brought about the breakage of fragile ¯ocs.
Performance comparisons between the full-scale DAF plant and the conventional plant located at the
city of Nam-Yang Ju in Korea are presented. DAF process showed higher eciency than the
conventional settling system improving the water quality in general, namely, turbidity, TOC, UV254, Fe
and Mn. We, therefore, conclude that DAF system should have substantial advantages over the
conventional settling process in drinking water treatment. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved
Key wordsÐdrinking water treatment, dissolved air ¯otation, scale-up, full-scale plant
water containing low-density particles such as phy- similarity from the tracer data results for a proto-
toplankton (Janssen, 1991; Edzwald and Walsh, type and model chlorine contact unit.
1992). Malley and Edzwald (1991) reported that When considering the proper design and oper-
DAF produced signi®cantly lower residual turbidity ation for a full-scale plant, sucient engineering of
than conventional gravity sedimentation did, par- a conceptual nature has to be performed on a pilot-
ticularly at lower temperature. scale plant in order to establish the parameters.
However, it was important that the piloting con-
Location of the full-scale DAF plant ditions re¯ected those in the full-scale plant, all of
Wha Do Water Treatment Plant in Nam-Yang the laws would not be used for scale-up strategy.
Ju has provided conventional water treatment pro- The success of a full-scale plant performance
cess for over 20 years. The main source of water depends heavily on the optimum design of the full-
comes from Northern Han River, which ¯ows from scale plant. Also, it is very important to seek opti-
the northeast inland to the west seashore of the mum operating conditions. In this study, we tried
Korean peninsula. The water qualities vary from to assess the full-scale DAF performance by com-
season to season. Sometimes, it is prone to bring paring treated water quality to the results of the
about algal blooms and ¯ash turbidity spikes pilot-scale plant. If the treated water qualities
exceeding 100 NTU in heavy rainy seasons. The would dier from each other, it would be regarded
conventional treatment process has unchanged from as having some failures in the scale-up.
the original design: coagulation, sedimentation, This article:
slow-speed sand ®ltration and chlorination. 1. sets up a scale-up strategy for the designing of
The conventional plant has historically performed full-scale DAF plant;
quite adequately. However, more recently, trends 2. investigates the performance of water treatment
have shown deterioration in the raw water quality and obtains optimum operating conditions for
and manifested itself in a gradual increase in non- the pilot plant DAF; and
point sources. The number of cafeÂs and restaurants 3. compares water treatment results between the
were a few hundreds in the 1980's, while the num- full-scale DAF and the conventional plant.
bers have increased enormously during recent years;
nowadays 3670, and golf links under construction
are 15 at the vicinity of northern Han river. A sur-
vey shows that BOD of raw water was 1 ppm in Water treatment procedure and plant compartments:
1990, 1.1 ppm during 1991±1992 and 1.4 ppm in pilot-scale DAF
1996. People suspect that the increase in BOD levels The schematic diagram of DAF plant is described
is related with those factors described above. in Fig. 1. The raw water enters into the rapid mix-
It was proved that the conventional plant has a ing tank and is mixed with the coagulant. Then the
limitation in improving the performance, so the water ¯ows through a two-stage ¯occulator, gradu-
DAF was adopted as the best process for updating ally building up the ¯ocks by gentle mixing during
treated water quality and solving construction costs. the passage through the ¯occulator.
The DAF ¯otation tank had one vertical side,
Scale-up strategy which was constructed of clear acrylic to allow
Some laws of similitude for designing water treat- visual observation of the ¯otation process. And the
ment plants are shown in Table 1. Reynolds num- tank had three compartments of sludge discharging
ber criterion and Froude number criterion can be pipe, inner tank and ¯otation zone. The ¯occulated
derived from the ¯uid dynamic similarity (Yu and water ¯owed from the bottom of the last ¯occula-
Lo, 1992). The others are based on model and pro- tion stage to the inlet distributor through a hydrau-
totype having the same values of design parameters. lic rotary joint by jet injection.
Hart and Gupta (1978) discussed the rational guide- At the outlet of the distributor, pressurized water
lines for designing studies to improve an existing with the dissolved air is added. At the air a pressure
water and wastewater treatment unit con®guration pump to ADT recycles dissolved tube (ADT), a
through the use of experimental analysis of a small- small volume of the water is pre-clari®ed by dis-
scale model. They found that the law of equal solved air ¯otation where compressed air is added
hydraulic retention time could get the best hydraulic from a compressor. Air is dissolved under pressure
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the full-scale DAF plant located in city of Nam-Yang Ju.
in the water and mixed with the ¯occulated raw discharge into a center clear-well, where there is an
water at the outlet of the distributor. euent pipe.
The ¯ocks and suspended solids ¯oat to the sur- The full-scale plant has a suction hood for back-
face. The ¯oating scum or sludge accumulated on washing the sand ®lters. One sand-®lter section is
the water surface is scooped o by a sludge dischar- individually backwashed while the other sections
ging spiral scoop and discharged into the center continue to ®lter water. In case the turbidity of raw
sludge collector, where there is a sludge outlet to an water reveals average value, backwash water should
appropriate sludge treatment facility. The ¯otation be recycled back to the ¯otation tank, if not, it
tanks euent ¯ows to sand ®lters and is discharged could be discharged. The whole system is controlled
to a chlorinating tank. automatically by the aid of equipped sensors for
water level, ¯ow rate, backwashing time, etc.
Dierent parts of the full-scale plant in comparison
to the pilot-scale DAF
EXPERIMENTS
The full-scale plant diers from the pilot plant in
sand ®ltration and backwashing method. The bot- Table 2 shows the experimental conditions and speci®ca-
tom of the ¯otation tank is composed of multiple tions for the pilot and full-scale DAF plant. The pilot
plant has operated for 1 year and the full-scale plant was
sections of sand ®lter beds with individual clear tested for 4 months. Pilot tests include three stages of op-
wells. The outlets from the individual clear wells eration: (1) varying surface loading rates, in order to ®nd
optimum surface loading rates for removing turbidity, (2)
ADT pressure changing, also to ®nd optimum ADT press-
Table 2. Operation conditions and speci®cations for the pilot and ure, (3) compare the water treatment results obtained
full-scale DAF from the pilot-scale and the full-scale DAF. Then, the
whole process operation was adopted for the full-scale
Parameter Pilot plant Full-scale plant DAF operation. Finally, a comparison of the performance
between the full-scale DAF plant and the conventional
Flow rate ( m3/h) 2.0±3.5 250 plant was investigated.
Flotation tank capacity (m3) 0.7 21 As shown in Table 2, in order to ®nd optimum operat-
Flocculation tank capacity (m3) 0.25 64
ing conditions we varied ¯ow rate, which means the vari-
Flocculation time (min) 15 15
Impellor speed (rpm): ation of surface loading rates, ADT pressure for the pilot-
Tank 1 120 120 scale experiments. Jar testing started at the beginning of
Tank 2 60 60 pilot plant operations. PAC (poly-aluminum chloride) was
Tank 3 60 60 used for coagulant and no pH adjustment was carried out
ADT volume (l) 0.6 200 during operation. Optimum PAC dose was de®ned as
Retention time at ADT (s) 19 19 those produced low turbidity and UV254 by Jar-tests. An
ADT type packed type packed type PAC dose of 2 mg/l (as Al conc.) was most eective to
ADT pressure (kPa) 330±550 440
remove turbidity and UV254.
Sand ®lter surface area (m2) 1 84.9
Filter media depth (m) 0.3 0.3 Samples were taken periodically from the sampling
Recycle ratio (%) 30 30 point for raw water, after ¯otation and ®ltration. Analysis
PAC dose (Jar test result) 2 mg/l as Al 2 mg/las Al was made for turbidity, TOC, chlorophyll-a, UV254
according to Standard Methods. Turbidimeter was HACH
820 Yong Chung et al.
2100 N, TOC was analyzed with Shimadzu TOC 5000 than settling processes, particularly conventional
analyzer. Iron and manganese were measured using an sedimentation.
atomic absorption spectrophotometer (Shimadzu, Japan).
Pilot testing was conducted at the surface loading
rates of 5, 7.5, 8.6 m3/m2 h. The results of removal
RESULTS eciency in terms of turbidity, KMnO4 consump-
tion, UV254 are presented in Fig. 2. The turbidity
Scale-up removal eciency change with the surface loading
Besides the scale-up strategy mentioned in Table rates is not appeared sharply as compared to
1, we tried an additional approach, that is: main- KMnO4 consumption and UV254 removal. From
taining equal surface loading rate during scale-up. It this ®gure it is evident to note that the excellent
is very important to get a laminar ¯ow for bubble removal eciency is obtainable with a surface load-
rising ¯ow in a ¯otation tank. The sudden change ing rate of 7.5 m3/m2 h.
of surface loading would lead a bad eect on
bubble ¯ow. Surface loading rates and ADT pressure
We applied the dimensions and the operating In order to increase solid separation eciency,
parameters from a pilot plant to a full-scale plant small air bubbles should be formed, which relies
design keeping in geometrically similar. The law of strongly on the proper design and operation of the
similitude and design results for dierent units of air dissolving tube (saturator). The theory of the
full-scale plant are shown in Table 2. process of bubble formation is known as the free
As shown in Table 3, the retention time is not energy variation due to the pressure drop. Higher
the value of 1, but 0.67. It means that the retention pressure produces smaller bubbles, but there is a
time for the two dierent plants diers from each diminishing return in reducing the bubble size.
other. Reducing retention time in the full-scale Above 500 kPa, increasing the ADT pressure has a
plant is good for minimizing the tank volume and small eect on bubble size (De Rijk et al., 1994).
saving construction costs. If the treated water qual- To ensure small bubbles, ADT gauge pressure of
ities reach unacceptable values, it would be some 400±600 kPa are recommended and under the this
failure in the design of the full-scale DAF. condition 10±100 mm micro-bubbles are formed in
those pressure ranges (Edzwald and Walsh, 1992).
Raw water quality Figure 3 shows the relationship between the sur-
Some of the raw water quality data collected face loading rates and turbidity removal eciencies
during the study are given in Table 4. Although the with the ADT pressure. Successful performance was
raw water turbidity ranged 3±64 NTU, the tests consistently achieved at a surface loading rate of
were carried out under the same water qualities for 7.5 m3/m2 h. When the surface loading rate is 5 m3/
the pilot and full-scale DAF. The total organic car- m2 h, turbidity removal eciency is the most excel-
bon (TOC) had an average value of 1.45 mg/l. lent at an ADT pressure of 550 kPa, compared to
These conditions, low TOC and very cold water, pressure at 330, 440 kPa. However, when the load-
made the upper area of Han River a good and con- ing rate increased to 7.5 m3/m2 h, the ADT pressure
servative case for investigating ¯occulation. In cold of 440 kPa shows the most excellent performance.
water, coagulants would be slower to react and And loading rate at 8.6 m3/m2 h, ADT pressure of
tend to produce small ¯oc particles. 440 kPa has poorer turbidity removal than that of
330 and 550 kPa. From the previous experiment, it
Finding optimum surface loading rate for the pilot was obtained that the optimum surface loading rate
plant is 7.5 m3/m2 h, so we determined the optimum oper-
So many important operating parameters were ating condition for ADT pressure at 440 kPa.
recognized for the DAF plant up to now, which
were ®nding optimum coagulation, ADT pressure Comparison of the pilot and full-scale DAF under the
and determining types of DAF (circular or rec- same surface loading
tangular), recycle ratios, surface loading rates, etc. The full-scale plant was monitored after the
In this study, we focused on optimization of surface period of the pilot plant tests, and had the same
loading rates and ADT pressure. Edzwald (1993) surface loading. Conditions were set as close as
reports that surface loading rates at full-scale DAF possible to the pilot plant except for retention time
plants typically range from 5 to 15 m3/m2 h, higher at ¯otation tank. Results for chlorophyll-a re-
duction are shown in Fig. 4. It is clear that the full- was longer than that of the pilot-scale plant; (2) at
scale plant performance is not as good as that of the middle of the ¯otation tank in full-scale plants,
the pilot plant in ¯otation. After ¯otation, the aver- turbulent mixing conditions may occur when the
age chlorophyll-a reduction is approximately 80% backwashing hood operated, or the backwash water
(compared with the average value of 91% for the is redischarged to the ¯otation tank. If fragile ¯ocs
pilot plant); interestingly, full-scale plant showed a were prepared, the turbulent mixing would shear
better performance for ®ltered water in chlorophyll- the ¯oc particles, producing micrometer sized par-
a reduction. ticles. This would yield poorer ¯otation perform-
It became possible to predict that the high values ance compared to the pilot-scale DAF; (3) slight
for chlorophyll-a concentration in ¯otation tank for deviations from the optimum steady state may have
the full-scale DAF were due to a higher chloro- occurred during the tests due to the full-scale DAF
phyll-a concentration in raw water. If there were runs at various operation conditions such as start-
any problems in treating chlorophyll-a and coagu- up period, ®xing some parts of plant, adjusting
lation conditions, it would probably indicate in- automatically operated parts). In further research, a
adequate operation. Anyway, the results of great deal of consideration is needed to ®nd an op-
chlorophyll-a reduction will be carefully studied in timal backwashing time and backwash water dis-
further research charging method.
A plot of the pilot plant and full-scale results for Schmidt et al. (1995) presented that they could
turbidity reduction are presented in Fig. 5. During reduce raw water UV254 up to 20±30% by pre-ozo-
the study period, the pilot and full-scale plants were nation. Also, the DAF having a post-ozonation sys-
able to meet a turbidity limitation of 1 NTU (in tem achieved average overall UV254 removal of
Korea). Overall, ®ltered water turbidity was 0.2± 84%. Plummer et al. (1995) (Fig. 6) showed that
0.3 NTU. However, it appeared that the full-scale the removal of UV254 was expected to be about
plant performed a little bit poorer than the pilot 50% and removal of DOC was 30 or 50%.
plant in ¯oated water turbidity. Possible expla- However, they were conducted under a bench-scale
nations for this dierence are: (1) the retention time experiment and used ferric chloride as a coagulant.
Fig. 2. The relation between surface loading rates and removal of turbidity, KMnO4 consumption,
UV254 reduction.
822 Yong Chung et al.
In this study, the pilot and full-scale DAF plants dierent from each other. Then, it is dicult to
achieved average overall UV254 removals of 25 and compare the experimental results directly.
32%, respectively. The full-scale plant revealed bet-
ter performance than the pilot-scale DAF. The Comparison of the DAF and the conventional plant
dierence between our study result and Plummer's The water treatment plant in the City of Nam-
result can be primarily attributed to dierences in Yang Ju consists of two lines of DAF and conven-
experimental conditions such as apparatus capacity tional process working parallel to each other. The
(bench-scale), raw water quality (turbidity range: actual dierences are in clari®cation only.
1.2±1.4 NTU, UV254: 0.062±0.069 cmÿ1) and coagu- Sedimentation works with a steady capacity of
lant, etc. 7000 m3/day and the DAF plant with 5000 m3/day.
The results of TOC removals are shown in Fig. 7. A summary of the results for turbidity, KMnO4
The TOC reduction follows very similarly the trend consumption, UV254, TOC, Fe, Mn, chlorophyll-a
observed for UV254 Ferguson et al. (1995) demon- reduction for the full-scale DAF plant and the con-
strated that the DAF combined with pre-ozonation ventional plant are presented in Tables 4 and 5.
process could reduce the TOC about 30 and 36% During the study period, DAF and the convention-
by direct ®ltration. Some of the other researchers al treatment plant were able to meet the turbidity
used dierent coagulant, ¯occulation process, oper- goal of 1 NTU in over all of the runs. Filtration
ation method; especially the shape of DAF was following ¯otation produced water with an average
turbidity of 0.2 NTU. Overall, ®ltered water turbid-
Fig. 4. Comparison of the pilot and the full-scale plant for Fig. 5. Comparison of the pilot and the full-scale plant on
removal of chlorophyll-a. reduction of turbidity.
Practical scale-up of DAF system 823
Fig. 6. Comparison of the pilot and the full-scale plant on reduction of UV254.
ity for CGS was 0.42 NTU higher than that of the on the pilot-scale in order to establish the par-
DAF. ameters applicable to the full-scale plant. The con-
Testing for TOC was performed a number of cept of maintaining equal surface loading rate into
times during operation. Treatment by DAF reduced scaling-up of DAF was a proper practice and strat-
the TOC by a mean of 28% in ¯otation and 29% egy. The process of optimization for pilot-scale
in ®ltration. Treatment by conventional treatment DAF has been done as follows: surface loading
processes reduced the TOC by a mean of 18% in rate, air dissolving tube pressure. The ®ndings indi-
sedimentation and 9% in slow speed sand ®ltration. cated that optimum conditions of surface loading
An increase of the TOC value occurred during sand rate and air dissolving tube pressure were 7.5 m3/m2
®ltration. Also, the TOC in the DAF euent was day and 440 kPa, respectively.
lower than that of the conventional sedimentation
It was also found that the removal eciency for
euent. For other data, such as reduction of
turbidity, TOC and UV254 from the full-scale plant
UV254, Fe, Mn, chlorophyll-a, the DAF plant
was as good as those from the pilot plant for the
shows better performance than that of the conven-
same surface loading rates. These results support
tional plant.
Based on these results, the DAF system should the availability of scaling-up in DAF.
have substantial advantages over the conventional Performance comparisons between the full-scale
process in all matters. DAF plant and the conventional plant located in
the city of Nam-Yang Ju are presented. Although
the DAF and the conventional plant seemed to
CONCLUSION
treat the water adequately, the DAF process
We scaled-up the DAF plant from a pilot-scale showed higher eciency of improving the water
(72 m3/day) to a full-scale (6000 m3/day) plant, and quality in general, namely, turbidity, TOC, UV254,
the sand-¯oat type DAF was used. When consider- Fe and Mn. We, therefore, conclude that DAF sys-
ing the scale-up of DAF to full-scale, sucient con- tem has substantial advantages over the convention-
ceptual nature of engineering has to be performed al process in all matters.
Fig. 7. Comparison of the pilot and the full-scale plant on removal of TOC.
824 Yong Chung et al.
Table 5. Water treatment results of the DAF and the conventional plant
Process
AcknowledgementsÐThis research was supported by a Hart F. L. and Gupta S. K. (1978) Hydraulic analysis of
grant from the G7 project of ``Development of Advanced model treatment units. ASCE J. Environ. Eng. Div. 104,
Water Treatment Technologies Ð Advanced Disinfection 785±798.
Techniques and Control for Disinfection by-Products''. Janssen J. G. (1991) Dissolved air ¯otation in drinking
water production in particular for removing algae. In
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