Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2015UT197B

Biofiltration of Utah Municipal Drinking Water

Institute: Utah
Year Established: 2015 Start Date: 2015-03-01 End Date: 2016-02-29
Total Federal Funds: $37,168 Total Non-Federal Funds: $105,779

Principal Investigators: David Stevens, Eva Nieminski, Darwin Sorensen

Project Summary: Organic compounds have been problematic in source waters for municipal water supplies since the advent of modern filtration. Historically, organic compounds caused operational problems due to the promotion of uncontrolled biological growth on treatment plant surfaces and in plant piping. Biofiltration has been used to some extent in Europe and North America since the 1970s and 1980s to remove these naturally occurring organic compounds from source waters since. These processes typically include such processes as slow sand and river bank filtration and some additional anoxic treatment processes. The history of biological water treatment in Utah is short and it is necessary to assess the potential for biological water treatment (BWT) in Utah drinking water treatment plants. This project will; (1) assess biofiltration in a full scale Utah drinking water treatment plant, serving a community of approximately 2,000 people, using frequent monitoring of raw water and water upstream and downstream of in-plant processes, (2) assess biofiltration using pilot plants running in parallel with the same treatment plant, in which both the water and the filter media are monitored, and (3) explore the relationship between ATP concentration in the water and on filter media and biofilter performance in terms of CA, AOC, and BDOC removal.