Local and Low-Cost Filter Media of Simple Water Filtration

Commonly the Installation of a Drinking Water Supply System (SPAM) in Indonesia consists of Coagulation-Flocculation, Sedimentation, Filtration and Disinfection Processes as a complete Process Unit for surface feed water such as rivers or lakes. Similarly, the clean water treatment process in Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan, Indonesia uses intake water sources from irrigation. The intake water from irrigation used by the local Regional Drinking Water Company has good quality with a low turbidity value below the quality standards set by the central government. Based on these qualities, the right process unit to treat the water is by filtration only. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct evaluation and research to improve the efficiency of the process unit and the economic value of the water treatment. The purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate irrigation feed water treatment by filtration using local and low-cost filter media. The filter reactor is designed with a rapid media filter type. The media is characterized using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) which is plugged in with EDS to find out the primary constituents and morphological information and after knowing the characterization of the media, and followed by tested the media placed in the water filter reactor with data collection. The results show that the size of the filter media has great effect on the quality of the processing water, which the smaller the media diameter conducted high selectivity and speed up filtration time. The greatest result obtained from testing feed water with media is 87.64%. Turbidity of the feed water sample process, which was previously 0.34 NTU, could be decreased to 0.02 NTU. Effective size of 0.4 mm and uniformity coefficient of 1.35 mm are the optimal allowable values.