DETERMINATION OF FILTER MEDIA EFFECTIVENESS: A CASE STUDY OF MTU WATER TREATMENT PLANT

Abstract

The Mountain Top University set up water treatment plant commercially for internal revenue generation. There was a quality challenges in the treated water released for sale at a time. This necessitated improvements on the treatment process which involved replacement of filter media in the filter beds cylinders. The previous was the conventional filter beds each with a particular media but of different grades. The present is a mixture of media in a cylinder to carter for quality challenges of raw water. This project investigates quality control parameters of the water treatment process. Samples were taken weekly before and after backwashing operations from inlet and outlet of each of the cylinders. Physicochemical analysis such as pH, Turbidity, Colour, Conductivity, Total Solids (TS), Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) and Total Suspended Solids TSS) were carried out on the samples. pH meter was used to determine those quality parameters, Turbidity, Conductivity, Iron content and Ca/Mg Hardness were determined using LaMotte Spectrophotometer. Gravimetric methods of analysis were used to determine TS, TDS and TSS. Results revealed that the mixed filter media improved the pH of water from 6.5 to 7.0 Standard (6.5–8.5), Turbidity from 4 to 1 FTU (Standard 5 FTU Max), Colour from 2 to 0 Pt Scale (Standard 15 max), TS from 298 to 93 mg/L(Standard 500mg/L max), TDS from 159. to 43 mg/LStandard 250mg/L max), TSS from 131 to 13 mg/l (standard 250mg/L) , Hardness (Ca/Mg) from 40 to 15 mg(Ca/Mg)/L (Standard 500mg/L). This signified improvement in the quality of processed water after back washings. This results from the filtration unit of the operation not only the general or local national standard but also the International quality standards set by World Health Organisation.