The process of water treatment

Malaysian consumed an average of 226 liters of water per person per day. Furthermore, Malaysian’s water consumption per capita per day is alarmingly high and increasingly about 7.6 liters per year (Christopher, 2011). Water is a major natural resource needed by humans for both drinking and irrigation purposed. The increases of population as well as the increase in economic and industrial activities have lead to high demand for water. In order to produce a potable water, water treatment process must be conducted. They are six important treatment processes which are preliminary treatment, sedimentation, filtration, ion exchange, absorption, and disinfection. (Refer to Figure 1 in Appendix1).

Firstly, water is treated in flocculation. During the flocculation treatment, coagulating chemicals are added to the raw water to bringing together destabilized or non-settleable solids (particularly colloids) to form large masses which can be settled and filtered out of water (“Water Treatment Process Control”, 2012). The addition of coagulating chemicals such aluminium sulphate is necessary in order to remove the organic particles present in the raw water and to change the colour of the water from cloudy to clear. When the raw water contains big quantities of algae and very turbid, aluminium sulphate usually doesn’t react quickly with the organic matter in water. The addition of anionic polyelectrolyte will help aluminium sulphate to react quicker with the organic matter. It’s attacks the colloidal particles of the water much faster, results in the formation of larger and heavier insoluble flocs, which settle much more easily. The amount of coagulant chemical to be added to the water must be controlled properly because overdosing may cause the...

... middle of paper ...

...topherteh.com/blog/2011/09/cropwateruse/

Wieffering,N., Swift,P., Anthony, E., &Behardien, B. (2007). Construction plumbing L2, FET College Series, Pineland, Cape Town: Pearson Education South Africa Ltd, pp. 13-14.

Pizzi, Nicholas G. (2010). Water Treatment, Principles and practices of water supply operations series. USA: American Water Works Association, p 8.

Kerri, K. D. (2008). Operation of Wastewater Treatment Plants: A Field Study Training Program. United States California: California State University, Sacramento Foundation, 1, 5-27

Water treatment process control. (2012). CEU Training Course. 54.

Water & Process Technologies.(2012). Chapter 05 – clarification. Retrieved from http://www.gewater.com/handbook/ext_treatment/ch_5_clarification.jsp Miller, W.S. (2009). Understanding ion-exchange resins for water treatment systems. Plant Engineering, 6(1), 1-13.