Sustainable Used of Natural Coagulants Aid for Enhancing the Performance of Alum to Treat Turbid Water

Abstract

Within the last ten years, many worried about the connection between Alzheimer disease and the residuals of aluminum in the water treatment. Therefore, there has been an increasing interest in developing substances that cause natural coagulation. In this study the effect of using natural coagulants, peeled nut extract and apricot tree gum with alum Al2(SO4)3 and compared to alum alone was investigated. The study was carried out by a series of jar tests with initial turbidity of 22 and 100 NTU. These values were taken to represent the minimum and maximum water turbidity of Tigris River in Baghdad. Different doses of natural coagulation and alum were used (ranged from 2-12 mg / L). After treatment, the turbidity has been measured and the results reflected that, the use of apricot gum and peels nut as coagulant aids with alum were better compared to the use of alum alone and that using of 50% alum + 50% peels nut gave maximum removal efficiency of 95 and 88% for initial turbidity of 22 and 100 NTU respectively and that using of 50% alum + 50% apricot gum gave maximum removal efficiency of 90 and 85% for initial turbidity of 22 and 100 NTU respectively. At the same time, this reduced the alum dose from 12 mg/L to 6 mg/L. This process will reflect on saving cost and reduce health risk associated with using of alum.