A column study of effect of filter media on the performance of sand filter

Abstract

Sand filter is a key unit process for particle removal in water purification treatments. Its long-standing use is due to on-site customized retrofit. Proper selection of filter media is one of the retrofit approaches to improve filter performance. This study described a series of controlled laboratory column tests and examined the effects of media property on filtration and backwash. When sand media of 0.51 mm in effective size was replaced by sand of 0.60 mm, the filter run increased up to 5 times in the given bed depth. The change of media property required an increase of backwash rate by 0.05 m/min to satisfy the requirement of bed expansion, more than 20%. When the anthracite was changed with lower effective size and uniformity coefficient, correlation with sand in the filter bed could be satisfied within the permissible error between media and bulk characteristics. Besides, this selection resulted in a well-stratified configuration of media layers after bed expansion. The column study showed that the correlation of property between the dual media had a significant effect on the filter productivity and backwash interval.