Use of Calcium Alginate as a Coagulant in Water Treatment

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Çevre Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2005

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Hale Aylin Çoruh

Danışman: Faika Dilek Sanin

Özet:

Coagulation and flocculation processes are important parts of water and wastewater treatment. Coagulation or destabilization of colloidal suspensions results in aggregation of colloidal particles by physical and chemical processes. Flocculation results in the formation of larger and settleable structures by bridging. Alginate, a polysaccharide obtained from marine brown algae, produces a gel structure when mixed with calcium ions, which is expected to be a potential coagulant in water treatment. This study aims to determine the use of calcium alginate as a potential coagulant during water treatment and determine its capabilities and deficiencies in coagulation processes. The study was conducted on turbid water samples prepared in the laboratory and those taken from the inlet of Ankara İvedik Water Treatment Plant (IWTP) by running typical jar tests. The main experimental variables were initial alginate and calcium doses, initial turbidity of water samples and the order with which the two chemicals are dosed. The main criteria investigated to check the success of the system was the final turbidity values and the turbidity removal capacity of calcium- alginate. Experiments were conducted on three different laboratory ا prepared turbid water samples and on the raw water taken from the inlet point of Ankara İvedik Drinking Water Treatment Plant (IWTP). These were prepared as high (150 NTU) medium (80 NTU) and low (10 NTU) turbidity samples. The calcium concentrations tested varied between 30 and 200 mg/L and alginate concentrations tested varied between 0.04 to 40 mg/L. Depending on the initial turbidity and initial calcium concentration of water sample the results depict that calcium alginate could be used as an effective coagulant for high (150 NTU) and medium (80 NTU) turbidity water sample especially at the calcium doses of 120 and 160 mg/L for low alginate