A PRODECI & Engineers Without Borders Research Project

THE IMPACT OF DESIGN AND OPERATING PARAMETERS ON SMALLBy S. Clayton

SCALE SLOW SAND FILTRATION PERFORMANCE FOR HOUSEHOLD WATER TREATMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.
Slow Sand Filtration (SSF) has been used to produce potable water on a large scale since the 19th century. It is generally recognised to be cheap, low maintenance, easy to install and able to produce high quality results in terms of the physical, chemical and biological quality of the water.

INTRODUCTION

Final Year Project Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

A test-rig filter was constructed from a plastic water butt with a cross sectional area of 0.1089m2. This larger cross-sectional surface area was chosen to minimise edge effects. As far as was possible the test-rig filter was modeled on the design specifications of the CAWST Biosand Filter which can be found within the manual (CAWST 2009).

METHOD AND MATERIALS

THE SSF PROCESS

Contrary to early understanding and the terminology used, SSF does not solely surface filter material out of water. In reality, although SSF operates via all mechanisms normally associated with filtration, in addition there are biological removal mechanisms. The biofilm which is inherent to this process is a very complex environment containing a multitude of different organisms including microorganisms.
Pea Gravel ~6mm diameter Drainage Gravel ~20mm diameter

Turbid Influent

Builders Sand ~0.7mm diameter Separating Gravel ~10mm diameter Clean Effluent

The benefits of SSF mean that it has been used as an extremely useful tool in disaster relief and development work. Even here the focus has been on community scale SSF. This focus has come under fresh scrutiny as there is significant contamination of water occurring between the source, i.e. the community treatment works, and households. To help combat this problem of source-to-mouth contamination, the focus of this project will be on small-scale, specifically household scale, SSF. The majority of the current guidance is based on larger scale SSF models and is not always appropriate.

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Research and present a thorough study of all SSF information available to be used as a resource for future work Quantitatively investigate the impact of filtration rate on turbidity removal for a standard small-scale SSF design Investigate the maximum filtration rate for the filter designed and built
Acknowledgements I wish to thank Dr. Michael Templeton for his supervision, support in allowing me to choose an external EWB-UK project and on his feedback on the report and poster and Ian Baggs for writing the research proposal that lead to this project.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The filter built for this project was effective at removing turbidity from influent water at a variety of filtration rates, shown above. Although both filtration rate and filter depth are shown in the literature to be important parameters in turbidity reduction, the limitations of this research project mean that the conclusions drawn from the experiments undertaken are incomplete.
References Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (2009) Biosand Filter Manual, [Online] Available from: http://www.cawst.org/assets/File/Biosand_Filter_Manual _Version_10_Sep09.pdf [Accessed December 2009]