Evaluation of Chitosans as Coagulants—Flocculants to Improve Sand Filtration for Drinking Water Treatment

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Eleanor B Holmes, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Hemali H Oza, Emory University; Emily S Bailey, Campbell University; Mark D Sobsey, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Language: English
• Date: 2023-01-09
• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2023 by the authors.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms24021295
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Keywords: POU; bacterial reduction; chitosan; sand filtration; coagulation; virus reduction; HWTS
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Pharmacy

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that two billion people worldwide lack access to safely managed water sources, including 1.2 billion who already have access to improved water sources. In many countries, household point-of-use (POU) water-treatment options are used to remove or deactivate microorganisms in water, but not all POU technologies meet WHO performance requirements to achieve safe drinking water. To improve the effectiveness of POU technologies, the use of multiple treatment barriers should be used as a way to increase overall treatment performance. The focus of this research is to evaluate multiple barrier treatment using chitosan, an organic coagulant–flocculant, to improve microbial and turbidity reductions in combination with sand filtration. Bench-scale intermittently operated sand filters with 16 cm layers of sands of two different grain sizes representing slow and rapid sand filters were dosed daily over 57 days with microbially spiked surface water volumes corresponding to household use. E. coli bacteria and MS2 coliphage virus reductions were quantified biweekly (N = 17) using culture methods. Bacteria and virus removals were significantly improved over sand filtration without chitosan pretreatment (Wilcoxon Rank-Sum, p < 0.05). When water was pretreated at an optimal chitosan dose of 10 mg/L followed by sand filtration, log10 reductions in bacteria and viruses met the two-star WHO performance level of effectiveness. Microbial and turbidity reductions generally improved over the filter operating period but showed no trends with filtration rates.