Natural coagulation as an alternative to raw water treatment

Abstract

The availability of drinking water is one of the several problems humans face, considering that its availability is reduced to 0.80% of the existing fresh water. Then, coagulation-flocculation is a stage of this treatment. It is a process that agglomerates the suspended particles in a larger (floc) that could be separated by sedimentation and filtration processes to make the water drinkable. So, this work aimed to evaluate the effect of the dose of coagulant of yam starch ( Dioscorea rotundata) and the speed of agitation in the turbid water treatment process. For which the yam starch was extracted by implementing two methods which were NaOH and H2O, using centrifugation at 1500 rpm for 10 min, and adjusting the pH with HCl and NaOH 0.20 M, for later determining the effect of agitation speed (rpm) and coagulant concentration (ppm) on the percentage of turbidity removal, pH, and colour, to be compared with a synthetic coagulant. A yield of 42.60% was found in the wet base. The natural coagulants extracted with NaOH presented better turbidity removal, with a percentage of 92.48% at an agitation speed of 40 rpm and a concentration of 250 ppm. It can be concluded that natural yam coagulant can be recommended for use in the coagulation stage in the raw water treatment process for subsequent conversion to drinking water.

Keywords

• agitation speed
• coagulant concentration
• flocculation
• turbid waters
• yam