A treatment system for rural water supply

Abstract

Most communities around developing countries including Nigeria lack access to portable water. There is total dependence on untreated natural water supplies such as rivers, streams, ponds and hand dug wells for the various domestic needs. There is therefore need to source for alternative method of water treatment that is relatively inexpensive compared with the modern techniques for the treatment of domestic water supplies. This study explores the use of oster shells as filtering media in the filtration process for water purification. Three different size ranges of the oster shells at constant depth in the filtering vessel were adopted. The raw water samples from the various surface water sources such as river, stream and pond were passed through each of these particle size ranges in the filtering structure. The filtrates were taken to the laboratory for analyses to determine the effectiveness of the filters. The parameters determined include odour, taste, turbidity, color, temperature, suspended solids, electrical conductivity, pH, total hardness and bacteriological contaminants. The results of the study indicate that the filter material is effective in the removal of turbidity, color, suspended solids and coliform bacteria. It was also effective for the decrease in temperature. The pollutants levels decrease with decrease in the particle size range. Electrical conductivity, total hardness and pH were found to increase with decrease in the particle size range. This increasing trend may be due to calcium component of the shells. © Maxwell Scientific Organization, 2013.