Use of Particle Counting to Optimise Water Treatment Plants Operation

Nowadays the drinking water industry has an increased focus on the effectiveness of drinking water treatment plants in removing waterborne pathogens such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium. For water quality assessment, use of methods to control size and numbers of particles in filtration effluent will be necessary. Because of high resistance of these kinds of microorganisms against disinfection and also insignificant impacts them on turbidity of effluents of treatment plants. In this study the effects of some operational parameters on direct filtration effectiveness, like numbers and size of particles in treated water, have been examined. Tests were performed by utilizing a pilot in laboratory scale, that consists of: raw water supply unit, coagulation, flocculation units and a 3layers filtration unit. The results show that the particle counting makes comprehensive monitoring of filtrationunit possible and acts more sensitive to present variations of turbidity.