FILTRATION: EFFECT OF SAND PARTICLES ARRANGEMENT ON WATER QUALITY

Water filtration is aprocess for separating suspended or colloidal impurities from water
by passage through aporous medium, usually aband of sand or others. Water fills the
pores (open spaces) between the sand particles and the impurities are left behind either
clogged in the open spaces or attached to the sand itself. It is well known that the
arrangement ofthe sand bed determines the quality ofthe water filtered.
In this research, the equipment use is the Filterability Index Unit (FIU). Different types of
sand bed arrangement with various sand particles sizes will be used to remove impurities
or suspended solids. The first experiment using paddy field sample water and the second
experiment using UTP River sample water.
In general, the main objective of this experiment is to propose the best sand bed
arrangement for water filtration process. During the filtration, the data for volumetric and
the flowrate is taken into account in order to calculate its specific cake filter resistance
and filter medium resistance. The filtrate is tested for its quality measurement. From the
result obtained, the first sand bed arrangement (larger particles to small particles, from
top to bottom) is proposed as the best sand bed arrangement for sand filtration due to the
lowest COD and smallest specific filtercakeresistance.