SURFACE WATER TECHNICAL FACETS

always contaminated and, even in good cases,

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
Figure 67 - Slow sand filters at Leiduin (Noord-Holland) bacteria population somewhat. When there is a
take the largest part of the treatment plant series of treatment processes, the total result can
be found by adding the log values of the individual
Despite the excellent water quality which may be processes (Table 9).
obtained by using slow sand filtration, these filters
are decreasingly used in the Western world. They Slightly contaminated surface water, having
are actually expensive to construct, expensive to only 1 0 - 1 0 0 E.coli per liter, can be sufficiently
operate and require enormous amounts of land. treated by slow sand filtration. When the water is
Technology now makes it possible to obtain reli- more heavily contaminated with 1,000 E.coli per
able water by other treatment means (e.g., disin- liter, sedimentation and rapid filtration need to
fection with chlorine, ozone and the like). be added. For Rhine water (with about 100,000
In developing countries the situation is exactly oppo- E.coli per liter), the treatment process consists of
site. Land and unskilled labor are abundantly avail- coagulation, sedimentation, rapid filtration, and
able, and building a slow sand filter can be done with slow sand filtration (total reduction log 5). When
local materials and by local labor without spending the contamination is even more severe, either a
scarce capital. The hygienic reliability of the water reservoir (reduction log 2 to 3), double coagula-
causes disinfection to be unnecessary, thus chlorine tion and sedimentation, or double sand filtration
disinfection is unnecessary as well. However, slow should be applied. However, any of these treat-
sand filtration, in developing countries, suffers from ment schemes is much more thorough - and,
the idea that this technique is obsolete and, there- so, more expensive - than would be required to
fore, no longer used in the Western world. remove the suspended and dissolved turbidity. A
cheaper solution can be obtained by reducing the
above treatment methods to the level necessary
When slow sand filters are used to obtain hygieni-
to remove dissolved turbidity and adding disinfect-
cally reliable water, a slow filtration rate needs to
ants for removing bacteria only.
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 Disinfection destroys bacteria by boiling, by irradi-
and fauna of the filter have been fully restored ating them with UV-light or ultrasound oscillations,
(start-up period). or poisoning them with chlorine or chlorine com-
pounds, bromine, iodine, ozone and a wide range

4.10 Disinfection Table 9 -The removal of E-coli for different treatment

processes
In order to be hygienically reliable, drinking water
Treatment process Removal of E-coli (log)
should contain none to minimum amounts of E.coli
Sedimentation (reservoir) 0.3-1.0
bacteria only, less than 1 per 100 ml according to Microstrainer 0.2 - 0.3
EU regulations. In most countries the guideline is Coagulation and sedimentation 1.0-2.0
even stricter (1 per 300 ml). Groundwater fulfills Rapid sand filtration 0.8-1.2
this requirement naturally, but surface water is Slow sand filtration 2.0 - 3.0

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TECHNICAL FACETS SURFACE WATER

of other chemicals. These chemicals need to be A severe disadvantage of using ozone is the for-
added only in small amounts, are easy to dose, mation of bromate when it reacts with bromide,
inexpensive, and 100% effective, causing them to which is often present in surface water.
be used on a large scale for drinking water prepa-
ration, even when their use is not strictly necessary Chlorine
as part of a multiple barrier system. Chlorine is the disinfectant most commonly used
in the world. This disinfectant reacts in water:
Ozone
When attention is paid only to the quality of the Cl2+ H 2 0 -> HOCI + H* + Cl-
water, ozone is the most attractive disinfectant. HOCI — H* + OCI-
After all, it decomposes, after having completed its
task, to molecular and atomic oxygen, which are in which the uncharged HOCI easily reaches the
quite desirable drinking water components. protoplasm of the negatively charged bacteria.
o 3 ->o 2+ o Finally, it holds that:

This decomposition process is accelerated when Cl2+ H 2 0 -» 2H* + 2CI- + O

the water contains oxidizable organic matter, which
binds atomic oxygen and accelerates the reaction in which the reaction is accelerated because of the
above towards the right side. So much ozone can presence of organic matter, requiring a higher dose
be abstracted from the water, in this case, that the of chlorine to be added for disinfection.
remaining amount is insufficient for disinfection. Chlorine is so inexpensive that this would not
cause any economic problem, but the fall of the
Sufficient disinfection requires higher doses of pH value and the increase in the chlorine taste of
ozone to be added, which becomes very expen- the water may be unpleasant.
sive. For disinfection only, this high price has lit-
tle meaning, as a dose of 0.1 mg/l is sufficient. Compared to ozone, which decomposes sponta-
However, when large amounts of organic matter neously, the solution of chlorine in water is rather
are present, a considerably larger amount of ozone stable after the removal of organic matter, caus-
(a few mg/l) needs to be added, which would ing it to remain present at a few tenths of mg/l
increase the price of the water by a few eurocents until the final home taps. The water has a definite
per cubic meter. 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.

Figure 68 - Ozone generator at Weesperkarspel(Noord- In addition to the use of chlorine gas, disinfec-
Holland) tion can also be accomplished with solid or fluid

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SURFACE WATER TECHNICAL FACETS

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.

(Noord-Holland)
4.11 Other treatment techniques
When the filter bed is saturated with pollutants,
Adsorption the filter material is removed. Activated carbon
Adsorption may remove non-charged micropollut- can be regenerated. At high temperatures the con-
ants from the water. Adsorption is based on the prin- taminants are partly burned and partly vaporized,
ciple that different particles will attract each other without burning the activated carbon itself.
because of the surface forces (van der Waals force,
surface tension). By creating a very large surface Powdered Activated Carbon treatment (PAC)
area, a relatively good removal can be achieved. Activated carbon can also be used for adsorption
by adding it in a powdered form to the water (some
In drinking water production, two different types of milligrams per liter). The powder is removed after
adsorption are used: a certain retention time by filtration or sedimen-
- granular activated carbon treatment (GAC) tation.
- powdered activated carbon treatment (PAC) Powdered carbon cannot be regenerated.

Granular Activated Carbon filtration (GAC) Oxidation

Activated carbon filtration uses activated carbon Some pollutants in the water can be removed by
as the granular filter material in a system similar oxidation. This process destroys or transforms
to the one described above. pollutants into components which are either harm-
less or can be removed in a successive treatment
In these filters, the activated carbon is present as process (mostly biological).
granules having a diameter of 0.8 -1.5 mm. These
granules have a highly porous structure, thus cre- The concept of oxidation is used in drinking water
ating a very large surface area (400 m2/g). production when strong oxidants, which are also
The water flows through the bed of granules, used for disinfection (e.g., ozone, hydrogen perox-
making the micropollutants adsorb to the surface. ide), are applied. Oxidation with oxygen, like when
Because of the surface forces of the grains, these aerating anaerobic groundwater, is not usually
pollutants are transported inwards, decreasing the called oxidation but rather iron removal, ammo-
load at the grain surface. nium removal, or manganese removal.
After the filter has been used for treating several
thousands of bed volumes of water, it will no longer Membrane filtration
adsorb any pollutants, referred to as breakthrough. Membrane filtration is a relatively young technique
This breakthrough differs across the compounds to that is still in development. With membrane filtra-
be adsorbed; some do adsorb better than others. tion, water is pressed through an extremely thin

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