Assessment of recycled glass and expanded clay in a dual media configuration for drinking water treatment

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to investigate the overall performance of different types of recycled glass media with the optimized coagulation conditions for drinking water treatment. Tests were performed using a laboratory-based filtration unit, with dual filter media configurations and synthetic raw water. The glass media showed comparable performance for both filtration and backwashing and avoided the breakthrough of particles in the effluent. Moreover, the promising performance of the glass media was a slow head loss development which should grant longer filtration runs, less backwashing requirement and thus possible clean water and energy savings. Finally, the optimized combination of filtration media and coagulation operations can lead to the best filtration performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Coagulation
• filtration
• recycled glass
• expanded clay
• dual filtration media

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Scottish Water who sponsored the project, and to the GCU Research Committee who offered the research studentship to Anna Cescon. The views in the paper do not necessarily represent those of the company.