Benchmarking the Water Treatment Process

Rapid sand filtration is a widespread method for the treatment of drinking water. Despite this fact, very little monitoring of the actual treatment process has taken place, partly because compliance legislation is generally focussed on the end product rather than the treatment process. In this study, novel methods for sampling the treatment process at waterworks were developed. In addition, useful performance indicators were identified and the treatment processes at 10 full-scale waterworks in Denmark using biofiltration were benchmarked. Results showed a large variation in performance, and provided the utilities with valuable feed-forward information, enabling them to develop best practice and optimize water treatment.