SURFACE WATER
always contaminated and, even in good cases,
Figure 67 - Slow sand filters at Leiduin (Noord-Holland)
take the largest part of the treatment plant
Despite the excellent water quality which may be
obtained by using slow sand filtration, these filters
are decreasingly used in the Western world. They
are actually expensive to construct, expensive to
operate and require enormous amounts of land.
Technology now makes it possible to obtain reli-
able water by other treatment means (e.g., disin-
fection with chlorine, ozone and the like).
In developing countries the situation is exactly oppo-
site. Land and unskilled labor are abundantly avail-
able, and building a slow sand filter can be done with
local materials and by local labor without spending
scarce capital. The hygienic reliability of the water
causes disinfection to be unnecessary, thus chlorine
disinfection is unnecessary as well. However, slow
sand filtration, in developing countries, suffers from
the idea that this technique is obsolete and, there-
fore, no longer used in the Western world.
When slow sand filters are used to obtain hygieni-
cally reliable water, a slow filtration rate needs to
be used (0.05 mm/s), and the filtrate should not
be used during the first days after cleaning, but
should be discharged or circulated until the flora
and fauna of the filter have been fully restored
(start-up period).
4.10 Disinfection
In order to be hygienically reliable, drinking water
should contain none to minimum amounts of E.coli
bacteria only, less than 1 per 100 ml according to
EU regulations. In most countries the guideline is
even stricter (1 per 300 ml). Groundwater fulfills
this requirement naturally, but surface water is
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TECHNICAL FACETS
contains 10 to 1000 E.coli per liter. This number
may even increase to 10,000 to 1,000,000 per
liter because of discharges of domestic sewage.
Therefore, a thorough reduction of this population
by means of treatment is required. Usually this
removal of bacteria is described as a log-removal.
This means that a log-6-removal amounts to a
reduction of 1,000,000 to 1 (105 to 10° or log 6 - log
0 = log 6). Any treatment process does reduce the
bacteria population somewhat. When there is a
series of treatment processes, the total result can
be found by adding the log values of the individual
processes (Table 9).
Slightly contaminated surface water, having
only 1 0 - 1 0 0 E.coli per liter, can be sufficiently
treated by slow sand filtration. When the water is
more heavily contaminated with 1,000 E.coli per
liter, sedimentation and rapid filtration need to
be added. For Rhine water (with about 100,000
E.coli per liter), the treatment process consists of
coagulation, sedimentation, rapid filtration, and
slow sand filtration (total reduction log 5). When
the contamination is even more severe, either a
reservoir (reduction log 2 to 3), double coagula-
tion and sedimentation, or double sand filtration
should be applied. However, any of these treat-
ment schemes is much more thorough - and,
so, more expensive - than would be required to
remove the suspended and dissolved turbidity. A
cheaper solution can be obtained by reducing the
above treatment methods to the level necessary
to remove dissolved turbidity and adding disinfect-
ants for removing bacteria only.
Disinfection destroys bacteria by boiling, by irradi-
ating them with UV-light or ultrasound oscillations,
or poisoning them with chlorine or chlorine com-
pounds, bromine, iodine, ozone and a wide range
Table 9 -The removal of E-coli for different treatment
processes
Treatment process Removal of E-coli (log)
Sedimentation (reservoir) 0.3-1.0
Microstrainer 0.2 - 0.3
Coagulation and sedimentation 1.0-2.0
Rapid sand filtration 0.8-1.2
Slow sand filtration 2.0 - 3.0
TECHNICAL FACETS
of other chemicals. These chemicals need to be
added only in small amounts, are easy to dose,
inexpensive, and 100% effective, causing them to
be used on a large scale for drinking water prepa-
ration, even when their use is not strictly necessary
as part of a multiple barrier system.
Ozone
When attention is paid only to the quality of the
water, ozone is the most attractive disinfectant.
After all, it decomposes, after having completed its
task, to molecular and atomic oxygen, which are
quite desirable drinking water components.
o 3 ->o 2+ o
This decomposition process is accelerated when
the water contains oxidizable organic matter, which
binds atomic oxygen and accelerates the reaction
above towards the right side. So much ozone can
be abstracted from the water, in this case, that the
remaining amount is insufficient for disinfection.
Sufficient disinfection requires higher doses of
ozone to be added, which becomes very expen-
sive. For disinfection only, this high price has lit-
tle meaning, as a dose of 0.1 mg/l is sufficient.
However, when large amounts of organic matter
are present, a considerably larger amount of ozone
(a few mg/l) needs to be added, which would
increase the price of the water by a few eurocents
per cubic meter.
Figure 68 - Ozone generator at Weesperkarspel(Noord-
Holland)
SURFACE WATER
A severe disadvantage of using ozone is the for-
mation of bromate when it reacts with bromide,
which is often present in surface water.
Chlorine
Chlorine is the disinfectant most commonly used
in the world. This disinfectant reacts in water:
Cl2+ H 2 0 -> HOCI + H* + Cl-
HOCI — H* + OCI-
in which the uncharged HOCI easily reaches the
protoplasm of the negatively charged bacteria.
Finally, it holds that:
Cl2+ H 2 0 -» 2H* + 2CI- + O
in which the reaction is accelerated because of the
presence of organic matter, requiring a higher dose
of chlorine to be added for disinfection.
Chlorine is so inexpensive that this would not
cause any economic problem, but the fall of the
pH value and the increase in the chlorine taste of
the water may be unpleasant.
Compared to ozone, which decomposes sponta-
neously, the solution of chlorine in water is rather
stable after the removal of organic matter, caus-
ing it to remain present at a few tenths of mg/l
until the final home taps. The water has a definite
chlorine flavor now, which most Europeans find
rather unpleasant. Americans, however, tend to
see that as proof that the water is hygienically reli-
able. When the chlorine flavor is unacceptable, it
can be removed by activated carbon filtration after
oxidation and disinfection.
Chlorine does not destroy all organic matter. Some
compounds (e.g., phenol) form rather unpleasantly
flavored substances after reacting with the chlo-
rine. These are removed during activated carbon
filtraton.
A severe restriction on the use of chlorine is due
to the formation of THMs and other undesirable
by-products during its reaction with humic acids
which are ever-present in surface water.
In addition to the use of chlorine gas, disinfec-
tion can also be accomplished with solid or fluid
347
SURFACE WATER
chlorine compounds like calcium (Ca(OCI)2) and
sodium hypochlorite (NaOCI):
Ca(OCI)? -» Ca2* + 20CI-
NaOCI -» Na* + OCI" and
OCI- + H' — HOCI
These compounds are easy to handle and less
dangerous to the environment. However, they are
considerably more expensive and they decom-
pose during storage, reducing their disinfecting
capacity.
4.11 Other treatment techniques
Adsorption
Adsorption may remove non-charged micropollut-
ants from the water. Adsorption is based on the prin-
ciple that different particles will attract each other
because of the surface forces (van der Waals force,
surface tension). By creating a very large surface
area, a relatively good removal can be achieved.
In drinking water production, two different types of
adsorption are used:
- granular activated carbon treatment (GAC)
- powdered activated carbon treatment (PAC)
Granular Activated Carbon filtration (GAC)
Activated carbon filtration uses activated carbon
as the granular filter material in a system similar
to the one described above.
In these filters, the activated carbon is present as
granules having a diameter of 0.8 -1.5 mm. These
granules have a highly porous structure, thus cre-
ating a very large surface area (400 m2/g).
The water flows through the bed of granules,
making the micropollutants adsorb to the surface.
Because of the surface forces of the grains, these
pollutants are transported inwards, decreasing the
load at the grain surface.
After the filter has been used for treating several
thousands of bed volumes of water, it will no longer
adsorb any pollutants, referred to as breakthrough.
This breakthrough differs across the compounds to
be adsorbed; some do adsorb better than others.
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TECHNICAL FACETS
(Noord-Holland)
When the filter bed is saturated with pollutants,
the filter material is removed. Activated carbon
can be regenerated. At high temperatures the con-
taminants are partly burned and partly vaporized,
without burning the activated carbon itself.
Powdered Activated Carbon treatment (PAC)
Activated carbon can also be used for adsorption
by adding it in a powdered form to the water (some
milligrams per liter). The powder is removed after
a certain retention time by filtration or sedimen-
tation.
Powdered carbon cannot be regenerated.
Oxidation
Some pollutants in the water can be removed by
oxidation. This process destroys or transforms
pollutants into components which are either harm-
less or can be removed in a successive treatment
process (mostly biological).
The concept of oxidation is used in drinking water
production when strong oxidants, which are also
used for disinfection (e.g., ozone, hydrogen perox-
ide), are applied. Oxidation with oxygen, like when
aerating anaerobic groundwater, is not usually
called oxidation but rather iron removal, ammo-
nium removal, or manganese removal.
Membrane filtration
Membrane filtration is a relatively young technique
that is still in development. With membrane filtra-
tion, water is pressed through an extremely thin