Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Lowering Water Turbidity

Status
Not open for further replies.

Oson

Structural
Dec 7, 2004
12
0
0
HN
Hello All:
I'm a Civil Engineering from a 3rd World Country, with a lot of things to do and very few resources for doing them.
I operate a Municipal drinking water Plant for 80 thousand people, our only treatment plant has a capacity for 100 l/sec, (1600 gpm) when the water turbidity is low 15 or 20 NTU maximum. The River our main water supply during more than 6 months of the year has very high turbidity up to 3000 NTU sometimes, and our Plant turns almost useless in those periods.
I need help in building an structure to lower the River turbidity before sending the water into the Plant, I have built a sand filter lagoon covering 1800 m2 of area with a filtration rate of 0.10 m per hour, which gives me about 900 gpm, but the water is still not clear enough. May I please hear some ideas, that could be within our economical reach.
I am thinking on a brick tank and putting some Alum in it.?
could it work?
Thanks for your time.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Your best option is probably to drill a well under or near the River and allow the soil to filter the water.

Mechanical clarifiers are normally used for turbidity removal because a mechanical clarifier is more economical than a large settling basin. A large settling basin is very inefficent as far as operation.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top