Abstract
Particle removal is an important step taken at water treatment plants (WTPs) for the safety of tap water due to its proportionality to the pathogen inactivation. Government promulgated a treatment technique for the optimization of filtration including continuous turbidity monitoring using on-line turbidimeters. Based on the turbidity measurements of 460 filters at 31 WTPs operated by K-water, the evaluation of filtration performance and the investigation of major causes related to particle breakthrough were explored. 98.1 % of the filters had an effluent turbidity measurement which was less than 0.1 NTU, but turbidity breakthrough of more than 0.3 NTU was noticed occasionally which is in violation of AWWA 5-Star guidelines. It was shown that the optimization of coagulation, filter-to-waste, the observance of optimal filtration velocity and backwashing process based on filtrate turbidity were crucial for the improvement of filtrate.